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THE 



LITERARY CHARACTER; ' 

OR THE HISTORY OF 

MEN OF GENIUS, 

iBrafcm. from tfcnr ofcm iF^Itrtcjs an& ContotottS. 

LITERARY MISCELLANIES: 

AND AN INQUIRY INTO 

THE CHARACTER OF JAMES THE FIRST 

^s BY 

^ ISAAC DISRAELI. 

EDITED BY HIS SON, 

THE RIGHT HON. B. DISRAELI. 



NEW YORK: 

W. J. WIDDLETON, PUBLISHER. 

1871. 






^ 






CAMBRIDGE: 
PRESSWORK BY JOHN WILSON AND SON. 



Sy Transfer 
NOV 29 1907 









AUTHOR'S PREFACE. 



The following Preface was prefixed to an Edition of 
the author's Miscellaneous Works in 1840. They were 
comprised in a thick 8vo volume, and included the 
Calamities and Quarrels of Authors, now published 
separately. This Preface is of interest for the expression 
of the author's own view of these works. 

This volume comprises my writings on subjects chiefly of our 
vernacular literature. Now collected together, they offer an 
unity of design, and afford to the general reader and to the 
student of classical antiquity some initiation into our national 
Literature. It is presumed also, that they present materials for 
thinking not solely on literary topics ; authors and books are 
not alone here treated of, — a comprehensive view of human 
nature necessarily enters into the subject from the diversity of 
the characters portrayed, through the gradations of their facul- 
ties, the influence of their tastes, and those incidents of their 
lives prompted by their fortunes or their passions. This present 
volume, with its brother " Curiosities of Liteeattjee," now 
constitute a body of reading which may awaken knowledge in 
minds only seeking amusement, and refresh the deeper studies 
of the learned by matters not unworthy of their curiosity. 

The Liteeaey Chaeaotee has been an old favourite with 
many of my contemporaries departed or now living, who have 
found it respond to their own emotions. 

The Miscellanies are literary amenities, should they be 
found to deserve the title, constructed on that principle early 
adopted by me, of interspersing facts with speculation. 

The Inqtjiey into the Liteeaey and Political Character 
of James the Fiest has surely corrected some general miscon- 
ceptions, and thrown light on some obscure points in thj«story 
of that anomalous personage. It is a satisfaction to^me to 
observe, since the publication of this tract, that while some 
competent judges have considered the " evidence irresistible," 
a material change has occurred in the tone of most writers. 



4 AUTHOR'S PREFACE. 

The subject presented an occasion to exhibit a minute picture 
of that age of transition in our national history. 

The* titles of Calamities of Authors and Quarrels of 
Authors do not wholly designate the works, which include a 
considerable portion of literary history. 

Public favour has encouraged the republication of these various 
works, which often referred to, have long been difficult to pro- 
cure. It has been deferred from time to time with the intention 
of giving the subjects a more enlarged investigation ; but I have 
delayed the task till it cannot bo performed. One of the Calami- 
ties of Authors falls to my lot, the delicate organ of vision 
with me lias suffered a singular disorder,* — a disorder which no 
oculist by his touch can heal, and no physician by his experi- 
ence can expound ; so much remains concerning the frame of 
man un revealed to man ! 

In the midst of my library I am as it were distant from it. 
My unfinished labours, frustrated designs, remain paralysed. In 
a joyous heat I wander no longer through the wide circuit 
before me. The " strucken deer " has the sad privilege to weep 
when he lies down, perhaps no more to course amid those far- 
distant woods where once he sought to range. 

Although thus compelled to refrain in a great measure from 
all mental labour, and incapacitated from the use of the pen and 
the book, these works, notwithstanding, have received many 
important corrections, having been read over to me with 
critical precision. 

Amid this partial darkness I am not left without a distant 
hope, nor a present consolation ; and to Her who has so often 
lent to me the light of her eyes, the intelligence of her voice, 
and the careful work of her hand, the author must ever owe 
"the debt immense" of paternal gratitude. 

London,. May, 1840. 



* I record my literary calamity as a warning to my sedentary brothers. When 
my eyes dwell on any object, or. whenever they are closed, there appear on a bluish 
film a number of mathematical squares, which are the reflection of the fine network 
of the retina, succeeded by blotches which subside into printed characters, appa- 
rently forming distinct words, arranged in straight lines as in a printed book ; the 
monosyllables are often legible. This is the process of a few seconds. It is re- 
markable that the usual power of the eyo is not injured or diminished for distant 
objects, while those near are clouded over. 



CONTENTS. 



LITERARY CHARACTER. 

CHAPTER I. 

PACT 

Of literary characters, and of the lovers of literature and art . . 23 

CHAPTER II. 
Of the adversaries of literary men among themselves. — Matter-of- 
fact men, and men of wit. — The political economists. — Of those 
who abandon their studies. — Men in office. — The arbiters of 
public opinion. — Those who treat the pursuits of literature with 
levity 27 

CHAPTER III. 
Of artists, in the history of men of literary genius. — Their habits 
and pursuits analogous. — The nature of their genius is similar 
in their distinct works. — Shown by their parallel eras, and by 
a common end pursued by both . . * . . .35 

CHAPTER IT. 

Of natural genius. — Minds constitutionally different cannot have 
an equal aptitude. — Genius not the result of habit and educa- 
tion. — Originates in peculiar qualities of the mind. — The predis- 
position of genius. — A substitution for the white paper of 
Locke 39 

CHAPTER V. 
South of genius. — Its first impulses may be illustrated by its 
subsequent actions. — Parents have another association of the 
man of genius than we. — Of genius, its first habits. — Its melan- 



6 CONTENTS. 

PAOB 

choly. — Its reveries. — Its love of solitude. — Its disposition to 
repose. — Of a youth distinguished by his equals. — Feebleness 
of its first attempts. — Of genius not discoverable even in man- 
hood. — The education of the youth may not be that of his 
genius. — An unsettled impulse, querulous till it finds its true 
occupation. — With some, curiosity as intense a faculty as in- 
vention. — What the youth first applies to is commonly his 
delight afterwards. — Facts of the decisive character of genius 48 

CHAPTER VI. 

The first studies. — The self-educated are marked by stubborn 
peculiarities. — Their errors. — Their improvement from the 
neglect or contempt they incur. — The history of self-education 
in Moses Mendelssohn. — Friends usually prejudicial in the youth 
of genius. — A remarkable interview between Petrarch in his 
first studies, and his literary adviser. — Exhortation . .79 

CHAPTER VH. 

Of the irritability of genius.— Genius in society often in a state of 
suffering. — Equality of temper more prevalent among men of 
letters. — Of the occupation of making a great name. — Anxieties 
of the most successful. — Of the inventors. — Writers of learning. 
— Writers of taste. — Artists 98 

CHAPTER VIII. 

The spirit of literature and the spirit of society. — The inventors. — 
Society offers seduction and not reward to men of genius. — The 
notions of persons of fashion of men of genius. — The habitudes 
of the man of genius distinct from those of the man of society. — 
Study, meditation, and enthusiasm, the progress of genius. — 
The disagreement between the men of the world and the literary 
character 123 

CHAPTER IX. 
Conversations of men of genius. — Their deficient agreeableness 
may result from qualities which conduce to their greatness. — 
Slow-minded men not the dullest. — The conversationists not 
the ablest writers. — Their true excellence in conversation 
consists of associations with their pursuits .... 136 



CONTENTS. 7 

CHAPTER X. 

PAGE 

Literary solitude. — Its necessity. — Its pleasures. — Of visitors by 
profession. — Its inconveniences 149 



CHAPTER XI. 

The meditations of genius. — A work on the art of meditation not 
yet produced. — Predisposing the mind.— Imagination awakens 
imagination. — G-enerating feelings by music. — Slight habits. — 
Darkness and silence, by suspending the exercise of our senses, 
increase the vivacity of our conceptions. — The arts of memory. 
— Memory the foundation of genius. — Inventions by several 
to preserve their own moral and literary character. — And to 
assist their studies. — The meditations of genius depend on 
habit. — Of the night-time. — A day of meditation should precede 
a day of composition. — "Works of magnitude from slight concep- 
tions. — Of thoughts never written. — The art of meditation exer- 
cised at all hours and places. — Continuity of attention the 
source of philosophical discoveries. — Stillness of meditation the 
first state of existence in genius 157 



CHAPTER XIL 

The enthusiasm of genius. — A state of mind resembling a waking 
dream distinct from reverie. — The ideal presence distinguished 
from the real presence. — The senses are really affected in the 
ideal world, proved by a variety of instances. — Of the rapture 
or sensation of deep study in art, science, and literature. — Of 
perturbed feelings, in delirium.— In extreme endurance of atten- 
tion. — And in visionary illusions. — Enthusiasts in literature and 
art. — Of their self-immolations 183 



CHAPTER XIII. 

Of the jealousy of genius. — Jealousy often proportioned to the 
degree of genius. — A perpetual fever among authors and 
artists. — Instances of its incredible excess among brothers and 
benefactors. — Of a peculiar species, where the fever consumes 
the sufferer, without its malignancy 207 



8 CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XIV. 

pag a 
Want of mutual esteem among men of genius often originates in 
a deficiency of analogous ideas. — It is not always envy or jeal- 
ousy which induces men of genius to undervalue each other .213 



CHAPTER XV. 

Self-praise of genius. — The love of praise instinctive in the nature 
of genius. — A high opinion of themselves necessary for their 
great designs. — The ancients openly claimed their own praise. — 
And several moderns. — An author knows more of his merits 

. than his readers. — And less of his defects. — Authors versatile 
in their admiration and their malignity 217 



CHAPTER XVI. 

The domestic life of genius. — Defects of great compositions at- 
tributed to domestic infelicities. — The home of the literary char- 
acter should be the abode of repose and silence. — Of the father. 
— Of the mother. — Of family genius. — Men of genius not more 
respected than other men in their domestic circle. — The culti- 
vators of science and art do not meet on equal terms with 
others, in domestic life. — Their neglect of those around them. — 
Often accused of imaginary crimes 231 



CHAPTER XVII. 

The poverty of literary men. — Poverty, a relative quality. — Of the 
poverty of literary men in what degree desirable. — Extreme 
poverty. — Task-work. — Of gratuitous works. — A project to pro- 
vide against the worst state of poverty among literary men . 247 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

The matrimonial state of literature. — Matrimony said not to be 
well-suited to the domestic life of genius. — Celibacy a concealed 
cause of the early querulousness of men of genius. — Of unhappy 
unions. — Not absolutely necessary that the wife should be a 
literary woman. — Of the docility and susceptibility of the higher 
female character. — A picture of a literary wife . . .262 



CONTENTS. 9 

CHAPTER XIX. 

PAGE 

Literary friendships.— In early life. — Different from those of men 
of the i orld. — They suffer an unrestrained communication of 
their ideas, and bear reprimands and exhortations. — Unity of 
feelings. — A sympathy not of manners but of feelings. — Admit 
of dissimilar characters. — Their peculiar glory. — Their sorrow. 276 

CHAPTER XX. 

The literary and the personal character. — The personal disposi- 
tions of an author may be the reverse of those which appear in 
his writings. — Erroneous conceptions of the character of dis- 
tant authors. — Paradoxical appearances in the history of genius. 
— "Why the character of the man may be opposite to that of 
his writings 287 

CHAPTER XXI. 

The man of letters. — Occupies an intermediate station between 
authors and readers. — His solitude described. — Often the father 
of genius. — Atticus, a man of letters of antiquity. — The perfect 
character of a modern man of letters exhibited in Peiresc. — 
Their utility to authors and artists 298 

CHAPTER XXII. 

Literary old age still learning. — Influence of late studies in life. — 
Occupations in advanced age of the literary character. — Of 
literary men who have died at their studies . . . .313 

CHAPTER XXHI. 

Universality of genius. — Limited notion of genius entertained by 
the ancients. — Opposite faculties act with diminished force. — 
Men of genius excel only in a single art . . . . .320 

CHAPTER XXIV. 

Literature an avenue to glory. — An intellectual nobility not chi- 
merical, but created by public opinion. — Literary honours of va- 
rious nations. — Local associations with the memory of the man 
of genius 326 



10 CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XXV. 

PAOB 

Influence of authors on societj', and of society on authors. — Na- 
tional tastes a source of literary prejudices. — True genius always 
the organ of its nation. — Master-writers preserve the distinct 
national character. — Genius the organ of the state of the age. — 
Causes of its suppression in a people. — Often invented, but 
neglected. — The natural gradations of genius. — Men of genius 
produce their usefulness in privacy. — The public mind is now 
the creation of the public writer. — Politicians affect to deny this 
principle. — Authors stand between the governors and the gov- 
erned. — A view of the solitary author in his study. — They 
create an epoch in history. — Influence of popular authors. — 
The immortality of thought. — The family of genius illustrated 
by their genealogy 339 



LITERARY MISCELLANIES. 

Miscellanists 367 

Prefaces 373 

Style 380 

Goldsmith and Johnson 383 

Self-characters 385 

On reading 388 

On habituating ourselves to an individual pursuit . * . . 394 

On novelty in literature 397 

Yers de Societe 401 

The genius of Moliere 404 

The sensibility of Racine 424 

Of Sterne 432 

Hume, Robertson, and Birch 443 

Of voluminous works incomplete by the deaths of the authors 456 

Of domestic novelties at first condemned* 462 

Domesticity; or, a dissertation on servants .... 474 
Printed letters in the vernacular idiom 487 






CHARACTER OF JAMES THE FIRST. 

Advertisement • 495 

Of the first modem assailants of the character of James I., Burnet, 

Bolingbroke and Pope, Harris, Macaulay, and Walpole 499 

His pedantry 501 

His polemical studies 503 

how these were political 506 

The Hampton-Court conference 50*7 

Of some of his writings 514 

Popular superstition of the age 516 

The King's habits of life those of a man of letters 519 

Of the facility and copiousness of his composition 522 

Of his eloquence 523 

Of his wit 524 

Specimens of his humour, and observations on human life 525 

Some evidences of his sagacity in the discovery of truth 530 

Of his " Basilicon Doron" 533 

Of his idea of a tyrant and a King 534 

Advice to Prince Henry in the choice of his servants and associates 536 

Describes the Eevolutionists of his time 537 

Of the nobility of Scotland 538 

Of colonising „ 539 

Of merchants 539 

Eegulations for the Prince's manners and habits 540 

Of his idea of the royal prerogative 543 

The lawyers' idea of the same 544 

Of his elevated conception of the kingly character 548 

His design in issuing "The Book of Sports " for the Sabbath-day 550 

The Sabbatarian controversy 552 

The motives of his aversion to war 555 

James acknowledges his dependence on the Commons ; their con- 
duct 556 

Of certain scandalous chronicles 560 

A picture of the age from a manuscript of the times 564 

Anecdotes of the manners of the age 569 

James I. discovers the disorders and discontents of a peace of 

more than twenty years 578 

The King's private life in his occasional retirements 580 

A detection of the discrepancies of opinion among the decriers of 

James 1 582 

Summary of his character 587 



THE 

LITERARY CHARACTER; 



OR. THE 



HISTORY. OF MEN OF GENIUS, 

DRAWN FROM THEIR OWN FEELINGS AND CONFESSIONS. 



TO 



EOBEET SOTJTHEY, LL.D., 

&c, &c, &c. 



In dedicating this work to one of the most eminent literary characters 
of the age, I am experiencing a peculiar gratification, in which, few, 
perhaps none, of my contemporaries can participate ; "for I am addressing 
him, -whose earliest effusions attracted my regard, near half a century 
past ; and during that awful interval of time— for fifty years is a trial of 
life of whatever may be good in us— you have multiplied your talents, 
and have never lost a virtue. 

When I turn from the uninterrupted studies of your domestic solitude 
to our metropolitan authors, the contrast, if not encouraging, is at least 
extraordinary. You are not unaware that the revolutions of Society 
have operated on our literature, and that new classes of readers have 
called forth new classes of writers. The causes and the consequences 
of the present state of this fugitive literature might form an inquiry which 
would include some of the important topics which concern the Public 
Mind— but an inquiry which might be invidious shall not disturb a 
page consecrated to the record of excellence. They who draw their in- 
spiration from the hour must not, however, complain if with that hour 
they pass away. 

I. DISRAELI. 
March, 1839, 



PREFACE 



For the fifth time I revise a subject which has occupied my 
inquiries from early life, with feelings still delightful, and an 
enthusiasm not wholly diminished. 

Had not the principle upon which this work is constructed 
occurred to me in my youth, the materials which illustrate 
the literary character could never have been brought together. 
It was in early life that I conceived the idea of pursuing the 
history of genius by the Similar events which had occurred to 
men of genius. Searching into literary history for the literary 
character formed a course of experimental philosophy in which 
every new essay verified a former trial, and confirmed a former 
truth. By the great philosophical principle of induction, in- 
ferences were deduced and results established, which, however 
vague and doubtful in speculation, are irresistible when the 
appeal is made to facts as they relate to others, and to 
feelings which must be decided on as they are passing in our 
own breast. 

It is not to be inferred from what I have here stated that 
I conceive that any single man of genius will resemble every 
man of genius ; for not only man differs from man, but varies 
from himself in the different stages of human life. All that 
I assert is, that every man of genius will discover, sooner or 
later, that he belongs to the brotherhood of his class, and that 
he cannot escape from certain habits, and feelings, and dis- 
orders, which arise from the same temperament and sym- 
pathies, and are the necessary consequence of occupying the 



16 PREFACE. 

same position, and passing through the same moral existence. 
Whenever we compare men of genius with each other, the 
history of those who are no more will serve as a perpetual 
commentary on our contemporaries. There are, indeed, secret 
feelings which their prudence conceals, or their fears obscure, 
or their modesty shrinks from, or their pride rejects ; but I 
have sometimes imagined that I have held the clue as they 
have lost themselves in their own labyrinth. I know that 
many, and some of great celebrity, have sympathised with the 
feelings which inspired these volumes; nor, while I have 
elucidated the idiosyncrasy of genius, have I less studied the 
habits and characteristics of the lovers of literature. 

It has been considered that the subject of this work might 
have been treated with more depth of metaphysical disquisition; 
and there has since appeared an attempt to combine with this 
investigation the medical science. A work, however, should 
be judged by its design, and its execution, and not by any 
preconceived notion of what it ought to be according to the 
critic, rather than the author. The nature of this work is 
dramatic rather than metaphysical. It offers a narration 
or a description ; a conversation or a monologue ; an incident 
or a scene. 

Perhaps I have sometimes too warmly apologised for the 
infirmities of men of genius. From others we may hourly 
learn to treat with levity the man of genius because he is 
only such. Perhaps also I may have been too fond of the 
subject, which has been for me an old and a favourite one — I 
may have exalted the literary character beyond the scale by 
which society is willing to fix it. Yet what is this Society, 
so omnipotent, so all judicial ? The society of to-day was 
not the society of yesterday. Its feelings, its thoughts, its 
manners, its rights, its wishes, and its wants, are different 
and are changed : alike changed or alike created by those very 
literary characters whom it rarely comprehends and often 
would despise. Let us no longer look upon this retired and 



PREFACE. 17 

peculiar class as useless members of our busy race. There 
are mental as well as material labourers. The first are not 
less necessary ; and as they are much rarer, so are they more 
precious. These are they whose " published labours " have 
benefited mankind — these are they whose thoughts can alone 
rear that beautiful fabric of social life, which it is the object 
of all good men to elevate or to support. To discover truth 
and to maintain it, — to develope the powers, to regulate the 
passions, to ascertain the privileges of man, — such have ever 
been, and such ever ought to be, the labours of Authors ! 
Whatever we enjoy of political and private happiness, our 
most necessary knowledge as well as our most refined plea- 
sures, are alike owing to this class of men ; and of these, some 
for glory, and often from benevolence, have shut themselves 
out from the very beings whom they love, and for whom they 
labour. 

Upwards of forty years have elapsed since, composed in a 
distant county, and printed at a provincial press, I published 
u An Essay on the Manners and Genius of the Literary Char- 
acter." To my own habitual and inherent defects were 
superadded those of my youth. The crude production was, 
however, not ill received, for the edition disappeared, and the 
subject was found more interesting than the writer. 

During a long interval of twenty years, this little work was 
often recalled to my recollection by several, and by some who 
have since obtained celebrity. They imagined that their at- 
tachment to literary pursuits had been strengthened even by 
so weak an effort. An extraordinary circumstance concurred 
with these opinions. A copy accidentally fell into my hands 
which had formerly belonged to the great poetical genius of 
our times ; and the singular fact, that it had been more than 
once read by him, and twice in two subsequent years at 
Athens, in 1810 and 1811, instantly convinced me that the 
volume deserved my renewed attention. 

It was with these feelings that I was again strongly at- 
" 2 



18 PREFACE. 

tractcd to a subject from which, indeed, during the course of 
a studious life, it had never been long diverted. The conse- 
quence of my labours was the publication, in 1818, of an 
octavo volume, under the title of "The Literary Character, 
illustrated by the History of Men of Genius, drawn from their 
own feelings and confessions." 

In the preface to this edition, in mentioning the fact 
respecting Lord Byron, which had been the immediate cause 
of its publication, I added these words : " I tell this fact 
assuredly not from any little vanity which it may appear to 
betray ; — for the truth is, were I not as liberal and as candid 
in respect to my own productions, as I hope I am to others, 
I could not have been gratified by the present circumstance ; 
for the marginal notes of the noble author convey no flattery ; 
— but amidst their pungency, and sometimes their truth, the 
circumstance that a man of genius could reperuse this slight 
effusion at two different periods of his life, was a sufficient 
authority, at least for an author, to return it once more to 
the anvil." 

Some time after the publication of this edition of " The 
Literary Character," which was in fact a new work, I was 
shown, through the kindness of an English gentleman lately 
returned from Italy, a copy of it, which had been given to 
him by Lord Byron, and which again contained marginal 
notes by the noble author. These were peculiarly interesting, 
and were chiefly occasioned by observations on his character, 
which appeared in the work. 

In 1822 I published a new edition of this work, greatly 
enlarged, and in two volumes. I took this opportunity of 
inserting the manuscript Notes of Lord Byron, with the ex- 
ception of one, which, however characteristic of the amiable 
feelings of the noble poet, and however gratifying to my 
own, I had no wish to obtrude on the notice of the public* 

* As everything connected with the reading of a mind like Lord Byron's is 
interesting to the philosophical inquirer, this note may now be preserved. On 



PREFACE. 19 

Soon after the publication of this third edition, I received 
the following letter from his lordship : 

"MOXTENERO, VlLLA DUPUY, NEAR LEGHORN, June 10, 1822. 

" Dear Sir, — If you will permit me to call you so, — I 
had some time ago taken up my pen at Pisa, to thank you for 
the present of your new edition of the * Literary Character,' 
which has often been to me a consolation, and always a 
pleasure. I was interrupted, however, partly by business, 
and partly by vexation of different kinds, — for I have not very 
long ago lost a child by fever, and I have had a good deal 
of petty trouble with the laws of this lawless country, on 
account of the prosecution of a servant for an attack upon a 
cowardly scoundrel of a dragoon, who drew his sword upon 
some unarmed Englishmen, and whom I had done the honour 
to mistake for an officer, and to treat like a gentleman. He 
turned out to be neither, — like many other with medals, and in 
uniform ; but he paid for his brutality with a severe and danger- 
ous wound, inflicted by nobody knows whom, for, of three 
suspected, and two arrested, they have been able to identify 
neither; which is strange, since he was wounded in the pres- 
ence of thousands, in a public street, during a feast-day and full 
promenade. But to return to things more analogous to the 
' Literary Character,' I wish to say, that had I known that the 
book was to fall into your hands, or that the MS. notes you 
have thought worthy of publication would have attracted your 
attention, I would have made them more copious, and perhaps 
not so careless. 

" I really cannot know whether I am, or am not, the genius 
you are pleased to call me, — but I am very willing to put up 
with the mistake, if it be one. It is a title dearly enough 
bought by most men, to render it endurable, even when not 
quite clearly made out, which it never can be, till the Posterity, 

that passage of the Preface of the second Edition which I have already quoted, hia 
Lordship was thus pleased to write : 

"I was wrong, but I was young and petulant, and probably wrote down 
any thing, little thinking that those observations would be betrayed to the author, 
whose abilities I have always respected, and whose works in general I have read 
oftener than perhaps those of any English author whatever, except such as treat 
of Turkey." 



20 PREFACE. 

whose decisions are merely dreams to ourselves, have sanctioned 
or denied it, while it can touch us no further. 

" Mr. Murray is in possession of a MS. memoir of mine (not 
to be published till I am in my grave), which, strange as it may 
seem, I never read over since it was written, and have no desire to 
read over again. In it I have told what, as far as I know, is the 
truth — not the whole truth — for if I had done so, I must have 
involved much private, and some dissipated history : but, never- 
theless, nothing but truth, as far as regard for others permitted 
it to appear. 

"I do not know whether you have seen those MSS. ; but, as 
you are curious in such things as relate to the human mind, I 
should feel gratified if you had. I also sent him (Murray), a 
few days since, a Common-place Book, by my friend Lord Clare, 
containing a few things, which may perhaps aid his publication 
in case of his surviving me. If there are any questions which 
you would like to ask me, as connected with your philosophy 
of the literary mind (i/mine be a literary mind), I will answer 
them fairly, or give a reason for not, good — bad — or indifferent. 
At present, I am paying the penalty of having helped to spoil 
the public taste ; for, as long as I wrote in the, false exaggerated 
style of youth, and the times in which we live, they applauded 
me to the very echo ; and within these few years, when I have 
endeavoured at better things, and written what I suspect to have 
the principle of duration in it: the Church, the Chancellor, and 
all men, even to my grand patron, Francis Jeffrey, Esq., of the 
Edinburgh Review, have risen up against me, and my later 
publications. Such is Truth ! men dare not look her in the face, 
except by degrees ; they mistake her for a Gorgon, instead of 
knowing her to be Minerva. I do not mean to apply this 
mythological simile to my own endeavours, but I have only to 
turn over a few pages of your volumes to find innumerable and 
far more illustrious instances. It is lucky that I am of a temper 
not to be easily turned aside, though by no means difficult to 
irritate. But I am making a dissertation, instead of writing a 
letter. I write to you from the Villa Dupuy, near Leghorn, 
with the islands of Elba and Corsica visible from my balcony, 
and my old friend the Mediterranean rolling blue at my feet. 
As long as I retain my feeling and my passion for Nature, I can 



PREFACE. 21 

partly soften or subdue my other passions, and resist or endure 
those of others. 

" I have the honour to be, truly, 

" Your obliged and faithful servant, 

"Noel Bykon. 
"ToL D'Iseaeli, Esq." 

The ill-starred expedition to Greece followed this letter. 

This work, conceived in youth, executed by the research of 
manhood, and associated with the noblest feelings of our 
nature, is an humble but fervent tribute, offered to the 
memory of those Master Spirits from whose labours, as Burke 
eloquently describes, " their country receives permanent 
service : those who know how to make the silence of their 
•closets more beneficial to the world than all the noise and 
bustle of courts, senates, and camps." 



THE 

LITERARY CHARACTER 



CHAPTER I. 

Of Literary Characters, and of the Lovers of Literature and Art. 

TvIFFUSED over enlightened Europe, an order of men 
U has arisen, who, uninfluenced by the interests or the 
passions which give an impulse to the other classes of 
society, are connected by the secret links of congenial 
pursuits, and, insensibly to themselves, are combining in 
the same common labours, and participating in the same 
divided glory. In the metropolitan cities of Europe the 
same authors are now read, and the same opinions 
become established : the Englishman is familiar with 
Machiavel and Montesquieu ; the Italian and the French- 
man with Bacon and Locke ; and the same smiles and 
tears are awakened on the banks of the Thames, of the 
Seine, or of the Guadalquivir, by Shakspeare, Moliere, 
and Cervantes — 

Contemporains de tous les hommes, 
Et citoyens de tous les lieux. 

A khan of Tartary admired the wit of Moliere, and 
discovered the Tartuffe in the Crimea; and had this 
ingenious sovereign survived the translation which he 
ordered, the immortal labour of the comic satirist of 
France might have laid the foundation of good taste 



24 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

even among the Turks and the Tartars. We see the 
Italian Pignotti referring to the opinion of an English 
critic, Lord Bolingbroke, for decisive authority on the 
peculiar characteristics of the historian Guicciardini : the 
German Schlegel writes on our Shakspeare like u patriot; 
and while the Italians admire the noble scenes which our 
Flaxman has drawn from their great poet, they have 
rejected the feeble attempts of their native artists. Such 
is the wide and the perpetual influence of this living 
intercourse of literary minds. 

Scarcely have two centuries elapsed since the litera- 
ture of every nation was limited to its fatherland, and 
men of genius long could only hope for the spread of 
their fame in the single language of ancient Rome; 
which for them had ceased to be natural, and could 
never be popular. It was in the intercourse of the 
wealth, the power, and the novel arts of the nations of 
Europe, that they learned each other's languages; and 
they discovered that, however their manners varied as 
they arose from their different customs, they participated 
in the same intellectual faculties, suffered from the same 
wants, and were alive to the same pleasures ; they per- 
ceived that there were no conventional fashions, nor 
national distinctions, in abstract truths and fundamental 
knowledge. A new spirit seems to bring them nearer to 
each other: and, as if literary Europe were intent to 
form but one people out of the populace of mankind, 
they offer their reciprocal labours ; they pledge to each 
other the same opinions ; and that knowledge which, 
like a small river, takes its source from one spot, at 
length mino-les with the ocean-stream common to them 
all. 

But those who stand connected with this literary com- 
munity are not always sensible of the kindred alliance ; 
even a genius of the first order has not always been 
aware that he is the founder of a society, and that there 



SIMILARITY OF LITERARY MEtf. 25 

will ever be a brotherhood where there is a father- 
genius. 

These literary characters are partially, and with a 
melancholy colouring, exhibited by Johnson. " To talk 
in private, to think in solitude, to inquire or to answer 
inquiries, is the business of a scholar. He wanders about 
the world without pomp or terror ; and is neither known 
nor valued but by men like himself." Thus thought this 
great writer during those sad probationary years of 
genius when 

Slow rises worth, by poverty depress'd ; 

not yet conscious that he himself was devoting his days 
to cast the minds of his contemporaries and of the suc- 
ceeding age in the mighty mould of his own ; Johnson 
was of that order of men whose individual genius 
becomes that of a people. A prouder conception rose 
in the majestic mind of Milton, of "that lasting fame 
and perpetuity of praise which God and good men have 
consented shall be the reward of those whose published 
labours advanced the good of mankind." 

The literary character is a denomination which, 
however vague, defines the pursuits of the individual, 
and separates him from other professions, although it 
frequently occurs that he is himself a member of one. 
Professional characters are modified by the change of 
manners, and are usually * national ; while the literary 
character, from the objects in which it concerns itself, 
retains a more permanent, and necessarily a more 
independent nature. 

Formed by the same habits, and influenced by the 
same motives, notwithstanding the contrast of talents 
and tempers, and the remoteness of times and places, the 
literary character has ever preserved among its followers 
the most striking family resemblance. The passion for 
study, the delight in books, the desire of solitude and 



26 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

celebrity, the obstructions of human life, the character 
of their pursuits, the uniformity of their habits, the 
triumphs and the disappointments of literary glory, were 
as truly described by Cicero and the younger Pliny 
as by Petrarch and Erasmus, and as they have been 
by Hume and Gibbon. And this similarity, too, may 
equally be remarked with respect to that noble passion 
of the lovers of literature and of art for collecting together 
their mingled treasures ; a thirst which was as insatiable in 
Atticus and Peiresc as in our Cracherode and Townley.* 
We trace the feelings of our literary contemporaries in 
all ages, and among every people who have ranked with 
nations far advanced in civilization ; for among these may 
be equally observed both the great artificers of knowl- 
edge and those who preserve unbroken the vast chain of 
human acquisitions. The one have stamped the images 
of their minds on their works, and the others have 
preserved the circulation of this intellectual coinage, this 

Gold of the dead, 
"Which Time does still disperse, but not devour. 

* The Rev. C. M. Cracherode bequeathed at his death, in 1799, to 
the British Museum, the large collection of literature, art, and virtu he 
had employed an industrious life in collecting. His books numbered 
nearly 4500 volumes, many of great rarity and value. His drawings, 
many by early Italian masters, and all rare or curious, were de- 
posited in the print-room of the same establishment; his antiquities, 
&c, were in a similar way added to the other departments. The 
" Townley Gallery " of classic sculpture was purchased of his executors 
by Government for 28,200?. It had been collected with singular taste 
and judgment, as well as some amount of good fortune also ; Townley 
resided at Rome during the researches on the site of Hadrian's Villa at 
Tivoli ; and he had for aids and advisers Sir William Hamilton, Gavin 
Hamilton, and other active collectors ; and was the friend and corre- 
spondent of D'Hancarville and Winckelmann. — Ed. 



ADVERSARIES OP LITERATURE. 27 



CHAPTER II. 

Of the Adversaries of Literary Men among themselves. — Matter-of-fact 
Men, and Men of "Wit. — The Political Economists. — Of those who 
abandon their studies. — Men in office. — The arbiters of public opin- 
ion. — Those who treat the pursuits of literature with levity. 

THE pursuits of literature have been openly or insidi- 
ously lowered by those literary men who, from 
motives not always difficult to penetrate, are eager to 
confound the ranks in the republic of letters, maliciously 
conferring the honours of authorship on that "Ten 
Thousand " whose recent list is not so much a muster-roll 
of heroes as a table of population.* 

Matter-of-fact men, or men of knowledge, and men of 
wit and taste, were long inimical to each other's pursuits.f 
The Royal Society in its origin could hardly support 
itself against the ludicrous attacks of literary men,| and 

* "We have a Dictionary of "Ten Thousand living Authors" of 
our own nation. The alphabet is fatal by its juxtapositions. In 
France, before the Revolution, they counted about twenty thousand 
writers. When David would have his people numbered, Joab asked, 
"Why doth my lord delight in this?" In political economy, the 
population returns may be useful, provided they be correct ; but in 
the literary republic, its numerical force diminishes the strength of 
the empire. "There you are numbered, we had rather you were 
weighed." Put aside the puling infants of literature, of whom such 
a mortality occurs in its nurseries ; such as the writers of the single 
sermon, the single law-tract, the single medical dissertation, &c. ; all 
writers whose subject is single, without being singular; count for 
nothing the inefficient mob of mediocrists ; and strike out our literary 
charlatans; and then our alphabet of men of genius will not consist, as 
it now does, of the four-and-twenty letters. 

f The cause is developed in the chapter on "Want of Mutual 
Esteem." 

\ See Butler, in his (: Elephant in the Moon." South, in his oration 
at the opening of the theatre at Oxford, passed this bitter sarcasm 
on the naturalists, — " Mirantur nihil nisi pulices, pediculos — else ipsos;" 



28 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

the Antiquarian Society has afforded them amusement.* 
Such partial views have ceased to contract the under- 
standing. Science yields a new substance to literature ; 
literature combines new associations for the votaries of 
knowledge. There is no subject in nature, and in the 
history of man, which will not associate with our feelings 
and our curiosity, whenever genius extends its awaken- 
ing hand. The antiquary, the naturalist, the architect, 
the chemist, and even writers on medical topics, have in 
our days asserted their claims, and discovered their long- 
interrupted relationship with the great family of genius 
and literature. 

A new race of jargonists, the barbarous metaphysi- 
cians of political economy, have struck at the essential 
existence of the productions of genius in literature and 
art ; for, appreciating them by their own standard, they 
have miserably degraded the professors. Absorbed in 
the contemplation of material objects, and rejecting 
whatever does not enter into their own restricted notion 
of " utility," these cold arithmetical seers, with nothing 
but millions in their imagination, and whose choicest 
works of art are spinning-jennies, have valued the intel- 
lectual tasks of the library and the studio by " the de- 

— nothing they admire but fleas, lice, and themselves 1 The illustrious 
Sloane endured a long persecution from the bantering humour of Dr. 
King. One of the most amusing declaimers against what he calls Us 
Sciences des faux Scavans is Father Malebranche; he is far more 
severe than Cornelius Agrippa, and he long preceded Rousseau, so 
famous for his invective against the sciences. The seventh chapter 
of his fourth book is an inimitable satire. " The principal excuse," 
says he, " which engages men in false studies, is, that they have at- 
tached the ideq of learned where they should not." Astronomy, anti- 
quarianism, history, ancient poetry, and natural history, are all mowed 
down by his metaphysical scythe. When we become acquainted with 
the idea Father Malebranche attaches to the term learned, we under- 
stand him — and we smile. 

* See the chapter on " Puck the Commentator," in the " Curiosities 
of Literature," vol. iii. ; also p. 304 of the same volume. 



ADVERSARIES OF LITERATURE. 29 

mand and the supply." They have sunk these pursuits 
into the class of what they term " unproductive labour ;" 
and by another result of their line and level system, men 
of letters, with some other important characters, are forced 
down into the class " of buffoons, singers, opera-dancers," 
&c. In a system of political economy it has been dis- 
covered that " that unprosperous race of men, called men 
of letters, must necessarily occupy their present forlorn 
state in society much as formerly, when a scholar and a beg- 
gar seem to have been terms very nearly synonymous."* 
In their commercial, agricultural, and manufacturing view 
of human nature, addressing society by its most pressing 
wants and its coarsest feelings, these theorists limit the 
moral and physical existence of man by speculative 
tables of population, planing and levelling society down 
in their carpentry of human nature. They would yoke 
and harness the loftier spirits to one common and vulgar 
destination. Man is considered only as he wheels on the 
the wharf, or as he spins in the factory ; but man, as a 
recluse being of meditation, or impelled to action by 
more generous passions, has been struck out of the 
system of our political economists. It is, however, only 
among their " unproductive labourers " that we shall find 
those men of leisure, whose habitual pursuits are con- 
sumed in the development of thought and the gradual 
ascessions of knowledge ; those men of whom the sage 
of Judea declares, that " It is he who hath little business 
who shall become wise : how can he get wisdom that 
holdeth the plough, and whose talk is of bullocks ? But 
they," — the men of leisure and study, — " will maintain 
the state of the world !" The prosperity and the hap- 
piness of a people include something more evident and 
more permanent than " the Wealth of a Nation." f 

* "Wealth of Nations," i. 182. 

f Since this murmur has been uttered against the degrading views 
of some of those theorists, it afforded me pleasure to observe that Mr. 



30 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

There is a more formidable class of men of genius who 
are heartless to the interests of literature. Like Corne- 
lius Agrippa, who wrote on "the vanity of the arts and 
sciences.'' many of these are only tracing in the arts 
which they have abandoned their own inconstant 
tempers, their feeble tastes, and their disordered judg- 
ments. But, with other- of this class, study has usually 
served as the instrument, not as the object, of their 
.it ; it was the ladder which they once climbed, but 
it was not the eastern star which guided and inspired. 
Such literary characters were Warburton,* Watson, and 
Wilkes, who abandoned their studies when their studies 
had served a purpose. 

AVatson gave up his pursuits in chemistry the instant 
he obtained their limited reward, and the laboratory 
closed when the professorship was instituted. Such was 
the penurious love he bore for the science which he had 

Malthus has fully sanctioned its justness. On this head, at least, Mr. 
Malthus has amply confuted his stubborn and tasteless brothers. 
Alluding to the productions of genius, this writer observes, that, "to 
estimate the value of Newton's discoveries, or the delight communi- 
cated by Shakspeare and Milton, by the price at which their works 
have sold, would be but a poor measure of the degree in which they 
have elevated and enchanted their country." — Principles of Pol. Econ., 
p. -15. And hence he acknowledges, that "some unproductive labour is 
of much more use and importance than productive labour, but is incapa- 
ble of being the subject of the gross calculations which relate to 
national wealth ; contributing to other sources of happiness besides 
those which are derived from matter." Political economists would 
have smiled with contempt on the querulous Porson, who once 
observed, that u it seemed to him very hard, that with all his critical 
knowledge of Greek, he could not get a hundred pounds." They 
would have demonstrated to the learned Grecian, that this was just as 
it ought to be ; the same occurrence had even happened to Homer in 
his own country, where Greek ought to have fetched a higher price 
than in England ; but, that both might have obtained this hundred 
pounds, had the Grecian bard and the Greek professor been employed 
at the same stocking-frame together, instead of the '•Iliad." 

* For a full disquisition of the character and career of Warburton, 
Bee the essay in " Quarrels of Authors." 



WILKES. 31 

adopted, that the extraordinary discoveries of thirty- 
years subsequent to his own first essays could never 
excite even an idle inquiry. He tells us that he preferred 
" his larches to his laurels :" the wretched jingle ex- 
pressed the mere worldliness that dictated it. In the 
same spirit of calculation with which he had at first 
embraced science and literature, he abandoned them; 
and his ingenuous confession is a memorable example of 
that egotistic pride which betrayed in the literary charac- 
ter the creature of selfism and political ambition. 

We are accustomed to consider Wilkes merely as a 
political adventurer, and it may surprise to find this 
" city chamberlain " ranked among professed literary 
characters: yet in his variable life there was a period 
when he cherished the aspirations of a votary. Once he 
desired Lloyd to announce the edition of Churchill, 
which he designed to enrich by a commentary; and 
his correspondence on this subject, which has never 
appeared, would, as he himself tells us, afford a variety 
of hints and communications. Wilkes was then warmed 
by literary glory ; for on his retirement into Italy, he 
declared, " I mean to give myself entirely to our friend's 
work, and to my History of England. I wish to equal 
the dignity of Livy : I am sure the greatness and ma- 
jesty of our nation demand an historian equal to him." 
They who have only heard of the intriguing demagogue, 
and witnessed the last days of the used voluptuary, may 
hardly imagine that Wilkes had ever cherished such 
elevated projects ; but mob-politics made this adventur- 
er's fortune, which fell to the lot of an epicurean : and 
the literary glory he once sought he lived to ridicule, in 
the immortal diligence of Lord Chatham and of Gibbon. 
Dissolving life away, and consuming all his feelings on 
himself, Wilkes left his nearest relatives what he left the 
world — the memory of an anti-social being ! This wit, 
who has bequeathed to us no wit ; this man of genius, 



32 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

who has formed no work of genius ; this bold advocate 
for popular freedom, who sunk his patriotism in the 
chamberlainship ; was indeed desirous of leaving behind 
him some trace of the life of an escroc in a piece of auto- 
biography, which, for the benefit of the world, has been 
thrown to the flames. 

Men who have ascended, into office through its gra- 
dations, or have been thrown upwards by accident, are 
apt to view others in a cloud of passions and politics. 
They who once commanded us by their eloquence, come 
at length to suspect the eloquent ; and in their " pride of 
office " would now drive us by that single force of des- 
potism which is the corruption of political power. Our 
late great Minister, Pitt, has been reproached even by his 
friends for the contemptuous indifference with which he 
treated literary men. Perhaps Burke himself, long a 
literary character, might incur some portion of this 
censure, by involving the character itself in the odium of 
a monstrous political sect. These political characters 
resemble Adrian VI., who obtaining the tiara as the 
reward of his studies, afterwards persecuted literary 
men, and, say the Italians, dreaded lest his brothers 
might shake the Pontificate itself.* 

Worst fares it with authors when minds of this cast 
become the arbiters of public opinion ; for the greatest 
of writers may unquestionably be forced into ridiculous 

* It has been suspected that Adrian VI. has been calumniated, for 
that this pontiff was only too sudden to begin the reform he medi- 
tated. But Adrian VI. was a scholastic whose austerity turned away 
with contempt from all ancient art, and was no brother to contemporary 
genius. He was one of the cui bono race, a branch of our political 
economists. "When they showed him the Laocoon, Adrian silenced 
their raptures by the frigid observation, that all such things were idola 
aniiquorum: and ridiculed the amena letteratura tilf eyery man of 
genius retreated from his court. Had Adrian's reign extended be- 
yond its brief period, men of taste in their panic imagined that in his 
zeal the Pontiff would have calcined the fine statues of ancient art, to 
expedite the edifice of St Peter. 



DEBASED VIEWS OF LITERATURE. 33 

attitudes by the well-known artifices practised by modern 
criticism. The elephant, no longer in his forest struggling 
with his hunters, but falling entrapped by a paltry snare, 
comes at length, in the height of ill-fortune, to dance on 
heated iron at the bidding of the pantaloon of a fair. 
Whatever such critics may plead to mortify the vanity 
of authors, at least it requires as much vanity to give 
eiFect to their own polished effrontery.* Scorn, sarcasm, 
and invective, the egotism of the vain, and the irasci- 
bility of the petulant, where they succeed in debilitating 
genius of the consciousness of its ^powers, are practising 
the witchery of that ancient superstition of " tying the 
knot," which threw the youthful bridegroom into utter 
despair by its ideal forcefulness/f*'" 

* Listen to a confession and a recantation of an illustrious sinner; 
the Coryphaeus of the amusing and new-found art, or artifice, of 
modern criticism. In the character of Burns, the Edinburgh Re- 
viewer, with his peculiar felicity of manner, attacked the character of 
the man of genius ; but when Mr. Campbell vindicated his immortal 
brother with all the inspiration of the family feeling, our critic, who is 
one of those great artists who acquire at length the utmost indiffer- 
ence even for their own works, generously avowed that, " a certain 
tone of exaggeration is incidental we fear to the sort of writing in which 
we are engaged. Reckoning a little too much on the dulness of our 
readers, we are often led to overstate our sentiments: when a little 
controversial viarmth is added to a little love of effect, an excess of colour- 
ing steals over the canvas, which ultimately offends no eye so much as 
our own." But what if this love of effect in the critic has been too 
often obtained at the entire cost of the literary characters, the fruits of 
whose studious days at this moment he withering in oblivion, or 
whose genius the critic has deterred from pursuing the career it had 
opened for itself I To have silenced the learned, and to have terrified 
the modest, is the barbarous triumph of a Hun or a Yandal ; and the 
vaunted freedom of the literary republic departed from us when the 
vacillating public blindly consecrated the edicts of the demagogues of 
literature, whoever they may be. 

A reaction appears in the burlesque or bantering spirit. While one 
faction drives out another, the abuse of extraordinary powers is 
equally fatal. Thu3 we are consoled while we are afflicted, and we 
are protected while we are degraded. 

| Nouer V aiguillette, of which the extraordinary effect is described 
3 



3-i LITERARY CHARACTER. 

That spirit of levity which would shake the columns of 
society, by detracting from or burlesquing the elevating 
principles which have produced so many illustrious men, 
has recently attempted to reduce the labours of literature 
to a mere curious amusement : a finished composition is 
likened to a skilful game of billiards, or a piece of music 
finely executed; and curious researches, to charades and 
other insignificant puzzles. With such, an author is an 
idler who will not be idle, amusing or fatiguing others 
who are completely so. The result of a work of genius 
is contracted to the art of writing ; but this art is only 
its last perfection. Inspiration is drawn from a deeper 
source ; enthusiasm is diffused through contagious pages ; 
and without these movements of the soul, how poor and 
artificial a thing is that sparkling composition which 
flashes with the cold vibrations of mere art or artifice ! 
We have been recently told, on critical authority, that 
" a great genius should never allow himself to be sensible 
to his own celebrity, nor deem his pursuits of much con- 
sequence, however important or successful." A sort of 
catholic doctrine, to mortify an author into a saint, ex- 
tinguishing the glorious appetite of fame by one Lent all 
the year, and self-flagellation every day ! Buflbn and 
Gibbon, Voltaire and Pope,* who gave to literature all 
the cares, the industry, and the glory of their lives, as- 
suredly were too " sensible to their celebrity, and deemed 
their pursuits of much consequence," particularly when 
" important and successful." The self-possession of great 
authors sustains their own genius by a sense of their 
own glory. 

by Montaigne, is an Oriental custom still practised. — Mr. Hobhouse's 
Journey through Albania, p. 528. 

* The claims of Pope to the title of a great poet were denied in the 
days of Byron ; and occasioned a warm and noble defence of him by 
that poet. It has since been found necessary to do the same for Byron, 
whom some transcendentalists have attacked. — Ed. 



ART AND LITERATURE. 35 

Such, then, are some of the domestic treasons of the lit- 
erary character against literature — " Et tu, Brute !" But 
the hero of literature outlives his assassins, and might ad- 
dress them in that language of poetry and affection with 
which a Mexican king reproached his traitorous counsel- 
lors — " You were the feathers of my wings, and the eye- 
lids of my eyes." 



CHAPTER III. 



Of artists, in the history of men of literary genius. — Their habits and 
pursuits analogous. — The nature of their genius is similar in their 
distinct works. — Shown by their parallel eras, and by a common end 
pursued by both. 

ARTISTS and literary men, alike insulated in their 
studies, pass through the same permanent discipline; 
and thus it has happened that the same habits and feel- 
ings, and the same fortunes, have accompanied men who 
have sometimes unhappily imagined their pursuits not 
to be analogous. 

Let the artist share 
The palm ; he shares the peril, and dejected 
Faints o'er the labour unapproved — alas ! 
Despair and genius ! — 

The congenial histories of literature and art describe 
the same periodical revolutions and parallel eras. After 
the golden age of Latinity, we gradually slide into the 
silver, and at length precipitately descend into the iron. 
In the history of painting, after the splendid epoch of 
Raphael, Titian, and Correggio, we meet with pleasure 
the Carraccis, Domenichino, Guido, and Albano ; as we 
read Paterculus, Quintilian, Seneca, Juvenal, and Silius 
Italicus, after their immortal masters, Cicero, Livy, 
Virgil, and Horace. 

It is evident that Milton, Michael Angelo, and Handel, 



36 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

belong to the same order of minds ; the same imaginative 
powers, and the same sensibility, are only operating with 
different materials. Lanzi, the delightful historian of 
the Storia Pittorica, is prodigal of his comparisons of the 
painters with the poets; his delicacy of perception dis- 
cerned the refined analogies which for ever unite the two 
sisters, and he fondly dwelt on the transplanted flowers 
of the two arts : " Chi sente cite sia Tibutto nel poetare 
sente chi sia Andrea (del Sarto) nel dipingere;" he who 
feels what Tibullus is in poetry, feels what Andrea is in 
painting. Michael Angelo, from his profound conception 
of the terrible and the difficult in art, was called its 
Dante ; from the Italian poet the Italian sculptor de- 
rived the grandeur of his ideas ; and indeed the visions 
of the bard had deeply nourished the artist's imagina- 
tion ; for once he had poured about the margins of his 
own copy their ethereal inventions, in the rapid designs 
of his pen. And so Bellori informs us of a very curious 
volume in manuscript, composed by Rubens, which con- 
tained, among other topics concerning art, descriptions 
of the passions and actions of men, drawn from the 
poets, and demonstrated to the eye by the painters. 
Here were battles, shipwrecks, sports, groups, and other 
incidents, which were transcribed from Virgil and other 
poets, and by their side Rubens had copied what he had 
met with on those subjects from Raphael and the an- 
tique.* 

The poet and the painter are only truly great by the 
mutual influences of their studies, and the jealousy of 
glory has only produced an idle contest. This old 
family-quarrel for precedence was renewed by our esti- 
mable President, in his brilliant "Rhymes on Art ;" where 
he maintains that " the narrative of an action is not com- 

* Rubens was an ardent collector of works of antique art ; and in the 
" Curiosities of Literature, " vol. iii., p. 398, will be found an interesting 
account of his museum at Antwerp. — Ed. 



ART AND LITERATURE. 37 

parable to the action itself before the eyes ;" while the 
enthusiast Barry considers painting " as poetry realised."* 
This error of genius, perhaps first caught from Richard- 
son's bewildering pages, was strengthened by the extrav- 
agant principle adopted by Darwin, who, to exalt his 
solitary talent of descriptive poetry, asserted that " the 
essence of poetry was picture." The philosophical critic 
will find no difficulty in assigning to each sister-art her 
distinct province ; and it is only a pleasing delirium, in 
the enthusiasm of artists, which has confused the bound- 
aries of these arts. The dread pathetic story of Dante's 
" Ugolino," under the plastic hand of Michael Angelo, 
formed the subject of a basso-relievo; and Reynolds, 
with his highest effort, embodied the terrific conception 
of the poet as much as his art permitted : but assuredly 
both these great artists would never have claimed the 
precedence of the Dantesc genius, and might have hesi- 
tated at the rivalry. 

Who has not heard of that one common principle 
which unites the intellectual arts, and who has not felt 
that the nature of their genius i? similar in their distinct 
works? Hence curious inquiries could never decide 
whether the group of the Laocoon in sculpture preceded 
or was borrowed from that in poetry. Lessing conjec- 
tures that the sculptor copied the poet. It is evident 
that the agony of Laocoon was the common end where 
the sculptor and the poet were to meet ; and we may ob- 
serve that the artists in marble and in verse skilfully 

* The late Sir Martin Archer Shee, P. R. A. This accomplished ar- 
tist, who possessed a large amount of poetical and literary power, asks, 
" What is there of intellectual in the operations of the poet which the 
painter does not equal ? "What is there of mechanical which he does 
not surpass ? The advantage which poetry possesses over painting in 
continued narration and successive impression, cannot be advanced as 
a peculiar merit of the poet, since it results from the nature of lan- 
guage, and is common to prose." Poetry he values as the earliest of 
arts, painting as the latest and most refined. — Ed. 



3S LITERARY CHARACTER. 

adapted their variations to their respective art : the one 
having to prefer the nude, rejected the veiling fillet from 
the forehead, that he might not conceal its deep expres- 
sion, and the drapery of the sacrificial robe, that he 
might display the human form in visible agony ; but the 
other, by the charm of verse, could invest the priest 
with the pomp of the pontifical robe without hiding from 
us the interior sufferings of the human victim. We see 
they obtained by different means, adapted to their respect- 
ive arts, that common end which each designed ; but who 
will decide which invention preceded the other, or who 
was the greater artist ? 

This approximation of men apparently of opposite 
pursuits is so natural, that when Gesner, in his inspiring 
letter on landscape-painting,* recommends to the young 
painter a constant study of poetry and literature, the im- 
patient artist is made to exclaim, " Must we combine 
with so many other studies those which belong to liter- 
ary men? Must we read as well as paint?" "It is use- 
less to reply to this question ; for some important truths 
must be instinctively felt, perhaps the fundamental ones 
in the arts." A truly imaginative artist, whose enthusi- 
asm Avas never absent when he meditated on the art he 
loved, Barry, thus vehemently broke forth : " Go home 
from the academy, light up your lamps, and exercise 
yourselves in the creative part of your art, with Homer, 
with Livy, and all the great characters, ancient and mod- 
ern, for your companions and counsellors." This genial 
intercourse of literature with art may be proved by 
painters who have suggested subjects to poets, and poets 
who have selected them for painters. Goldsmith sug- 
gested the subject of the tragic and pathetic picture of 
Ugolino to the pencil of Reynolds. 

* Few writers were so competent to instruct in art as Gesner, who 
was not only an author and a poet, but an artist who decorated his 
poems by designs as graceful as their subject. — Ed. 



NATURAL GENIUS. 39 

All the classes of men in society have their peculiar 
sorrows and enjoyments, as they have their peculiar habits 
and characteristics. In the history of men of genius we 
may often open the secret story of their minds, for they 
have above others the privilege of communicating their 
own feelings ; and every life of a man of genius, composed 
by himself, presents us with the experimental philosophy 
of the mind. By living with their brothers, and con- 
templating their masters, they will judge from conscious- 
ness less erroneously than from discussion ; and in form- 
ing comparative views and parallel situations, they will 
discover certain habits and feelings, and find these reflect- 
ed in themselves. 

Sydenham has beautifully said, " Whoever describes a 
violet exactly as to its colour, taste, smell, form, and other 
properties, will find the description agree in most par- 
ticulars with all the violets in the universe." 



CHAPTER IV. 



Of natural genius. — Minds constitutionally different cannot have an 
equal aptitude. — Genius not the result of habit and education. — 
Originates in peculiar qualities of the mind. — The predisposition of 
genius. — A substitution for the white paper of Locke.* 

THAT faculty in art which individualises the artist, 
belonging to him and to no other, and which in a 
work forms that creative part whose likeness is not found 

* In the second edition of this work in 1818, I touched on some 
points of this inquiry in the second chapter: I almost despaired to 
find any philosopher sympathise with the subject, so invulnerable, 
they imagine, are the entrenchments of their theories. I was agree- 
ably surprised to find these ideas taken up in the Edinburgh Review for 
August, 1820, in an entertaining article on Reynolds. I have, no doubt 
profited by the perusal, though this chapter was prepared before I 



40 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

in any other work — is it inherent in the constitutional 
dispositions of the Creator, or can it be formed by patient 
acquisition ? 

Astonished at their own silent and obscure progress, 
some have imagined that they have formed their genius 
solely by their own studies; when they generated, they 
conceived that they had acquired ; and, losing the dis- 
tinction between nature and habit, with fatal temerity the 
idolatry of philosophy substituted something visible and 
palpable, yet shaped by the most opposite fancies, called 
a Theory, for Nature herself! Men of genius, whose 
great occupation is to be conversant with the inspirations 
of Nature, made up a factitious one among themselves, 
and assumed that they could operate without the inter- 
vention of the occult original. But Nature would not be 
mocked; and whenever this race of idolaters have 
worked without her agency, she has afflicted them with 
the most stubborn sterility. 

Theories of genius are the peculiar constructions of our 
own philosophical times ; ages of genius had passed away, 
and they left no other record than their works ; no pre- 
concerted theory described the workings of the imagina- 
tion to be without imagination, nor did they venture to 
teach how to invent invention. 

The character of genius, viewed as the effect of habit 
and education, on the principle of the equality of the 
human mind, infers that men have an equal aptitude for 
the work of genius : a paradox which, with a more fatal 
one, came from the French school, and arose probably 
from an equivocal expression. 

Locke employed the well-known comparison of the 
mind with " white paper void of all characters," to free 
his famous "Inquiry" from that powerful obstacle to his 
system, the absurd belief of " innate ideas," of notions of 

met with that spirited vindication of " an inherent difference in the 
organs or faculties to receive impressions of any xind." 



/ 



THEORIES OF GENIUS. 41 

objects before objects were presented to observation. 
Our philosopher considered that this simple analogy 
sufficiently described the manner in which he conceived 
the impressions of the senses write themselves on the mind. 
His French pupils, the amusing Helvetius, or Diderot, 
for they were equally concerned in the paradoxical 
"L'Esprit," inferred that this blank paper served also 
as an evidence that men had an equal aptitude for 
genius, just as the blank paper reflects to us whatever 
characters we trace on it. This equality of minds gave 
rise to the same monstrous doctrine in the science of 
metaphysics which that of another verbal misconception, 
the equality of men, did in that of politics. The Scottish 
metaphysicians powerfully combined to illustrate the 
mechanism of the mind, — an important and a curious 
truth ; for as rules and principles exist in the nature of 
things, and when discovered are only thence drawn out, 
genius unconsciously conducts itself by a uniform pro- 
cess ; and when this process had been traced, they in- 
ferred that what was done by some men, under the 
influence of fundamental laws which regulate the march 
of the intellect, must also be in the reach of others, who, 
in the same circumstances, apply themselves to the same 
study. But these metaphysicians resemble anatomists, 
under whose knife all men are alike. They know the 
structure of the bones, the movement of the muscles, 
and where the connecting;- ligaments lie ! but the invis- 
ible principle of life flies from their touch. It is the 
practitioner on the living body who studies in every 
individual that peculiarity of constitution which forms 
the idiosyncrasy. 

Under the influence of such novel theories of genius, 
Johnson defined it as " A Mind of large general powers 
accidentally determined by some particular direction." 
On this principle we must infer that the reasoning 
L^cke, or the arithmetical De Moivre, could have been 



42 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

the musical and fairy Spenser."* This conception of the 
nature of genius became prevalent. It induced the 

philosophical Beccariato assert that every individual had 
an equal degree of genius for poetry and eloquence; it 
runs through the philosophy of the elegant Dugald 
Stewart; and Reynolds, the pupil of Johnson in lit 
ture, adopting the paradox, constructed his automatic 
system on this principle of equal aptitude. He says, 
"this excellence, however expressed by genius, taste, or 
the gift of Heaven, I am confident may he acquired" 
Reynolds had the modesty to fancy that so many rivals, 
unendowed by nature, might have equalled the magic 
of his own pencil : but his theory of industry, so essential 
to genius, yet so useless without it, too long stimulated 
the drudges of art, and left us without a Correggio or a 
Raphael ! Another man of genius caught the fever of 
the new system. Currie, in his eloquent "Life of 
Burns," swells out the scene of genius to a startling 
magnificence ; for he asserts that, " the talents necessary 
to the construction of an 'Iliad,' under different dis- 
cipline and application, might have led armies to vic- 
tory or kingdoms to prosperity; might have wielded 
the thunder of eloquence, or discovered and enlarged 
the sciences." All this we find in the text ; but in the 
clear intellect of this man of genius a vast number of 
intervening difficulties started up, and in a cojnous note 
the numerous exceptions show that the assumed theory 
requires no other refutation than what the theorist 

* It is more dangerous to define than to describe : a dry definition 
excludes so much, an ardent description at once appeals to our sympa- 
thies. How much more comprehensible our great critic becomes 
when he nobly describes genius, (; as the power of mind that collects, 
combines, amplifies, and animates; the energy without which judg- 
ment is co'.d, and kuowledge is inert!" And it is this power OF 
mixd, .this primary faculty and native aptitude, which we deem may 
exist separately from education and habit, since these are often 
found unaccompanied by genius. 



THEOEIES OP GENIUS. 43 

has himself so abundantly and so judiciously supplied. 
There is something ludicrous in the result of a theory of 
genius which would place Hobbes and Erasmus, those 
timid and learned recluses, to open a campaign with the 
military invention and physical intrepidity of a Marl- 
borough; or conclude that the romantic bard of the 
" Fairy Queen," amidst the quickly-shifting scenes of his 
visionary reveries, could have deduced, by slow and 
patient watchings of the mind, the system and the 
demonstrations of Newton. 

Such theorists deduce the faculty called genius from a 
variety of exterior or secondary causes: zealously reject- 
ing the notion that genius may originate in constitu- 
tional dispositions, and be only a mode of the individual's 
existence, they deny that minds are differently consti- 
tuted. Habit and education, being more palpable and 
visible in their operations, and progressive in the develop- 
ment of the intellectual faculties, have been imagined 
fully sufficient to make the creative faculty a subject of 
acquirement. 

But when these theorists had discovered the curious 
fact, that we have owed to accident several men of genius, 
and when they laid open some sources which influenced 
genius in its progress, they did not go one step further, 
they did not inquire whether such sources and such acci- 
dents had ever supplied the want of genius hi the individ- 
ual. Effects were here again mistaken for causes. Could 
Spenser have kindled a poet in Cowley, Richardson a 
painter in Reynolds, and Descartes a metaphysician 
in Malebranche, if those master-minds, pointed out as 
having been such from accident, had not first received 
the indelible mint-stamp struck by the hand of Nature, 
and which, to give it a name, we may be allowed to call 
the predisposition of genius ? The accidents so triumph- 
antly held forth, which are imagined to have created the 
genius of these men, have occurred to a thousand who 



44 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

have run the same career ; but how does it happen that 
the multitude remain a multitude, and the man of genius 
arrives alone at the goal ? 

This theory, which long dazzled its beholders, was in 
time found to stand in contradiction with itself, and 
perpetually with their own experience. Reynolds pared 
down his decision in the progress of his lectures, often 
wavered, often altered, and grew more confused as he 
lived longer to look about him.* The infirm votaries of 
the new philosophy, with all their sources of genius open 
before them, went on multiplying mediocrity, while 
inherent genius, true to nature, still continued rare in 
its solitary independence. 

Others have strenuously denied that we are born with 
any peculiar species of mind, and resolve the mysterious 
problem into capacity, of which men only differ in the 
degree. They can perceive no distinction between the 
poetical and the mathematical genius ; and they con- 
clude that a man of genius, possessing a general capacity, 
may become whatever he chooses, but is determined by 
his first acquired habit to be what he is.f* 

In substituting the term capacity for that of genius, 

* I transcribe the last opinions of Mr. Edgeworth. " As to original 
genius, and the effect of education in forming taste or directing talent, 
the last revisal of his opinions was given by himself, in the introduc- 
tion to the second edition of 'Professional Education.' He was 
strengthened in his belief that many of the great differences of intellect 
which appear in men, depend more upon the early cultivating the 
habit of attention than upon any disparity between the powers of one 
individual and another. Perhaps, he latterly allowed that there is 
more difference than he had formerly admitted between the natural 
powers of different persons; but not so great as is generally supposed." 
—Edgeworth' s Memoirs, ii., 388. 

f Johnson once asserted, that " the supposition of one man having 
more imagination, another more judgment, is not true ; it is only one 
man has more mind than another. He who has vigour may walk to 
the east as well as the west, if he happens to turn his head that 
way." Godwin was persuaded that all genius is a mere acquisition, 
for he hints at "infusing it,'' and making it a thing "heritable." A 



PREDISPOSITION OF GENIUS. 45 

the origin or nature remains equally occult. How is it 
acquired, or how is it inherent ? To assert that any man 
of genius may become what he wills, those most fer- 
vently protest against who feel that the character of 
genius is such that it cannot he other than it is ; that 
there is an identity of minds, and that there exists an 
interior conformity as marked and as perfect as the 
exterior physiognomy. A Scotch metaphysician has 
recently declared that " Locke or JSTewton might have 
been as eminent poets as Homer or Milton, had they 
given themselves early to the study of poetry." It is 
well to know how far this taste will go. We believe 
that had these philosophers obstinately, against nature, 
persisted in the attempt, as some have unluckily for 
themselves, we should have lost two great philosophers, 
and have obtained two supernumerary poets.* 

It would be more useful to discover another source of 
genius for philosophers and poets, less fallible than the 
gratuitous assumptions of these theorists. An adequate 
origin for peculiar qualities in the mind may be found 
in that constitutional or secret propensity which adapts 
some for particular pursuits and forms the predisposition 
of genius. 

Not that we are bound to demonstrate what our 
adversaries have failed in proving ; we may still remain 
ignorant of the nature of genius, and yet be convinced 

reversion which has been missed by the many respectable dunces who 
have been sons of men of genius. 

* This very Scotch metaphysician, at the instant he lays down this 
postulate, acknowledges that " Dr. Beattie had talents for a poet, but 
apparently not for a philosoplier." It is amusing to learn another 
result of his ungenial metaphysics. This sage demonstrates and con- 
cludes in these words, " It will therefore be found, with little excep- 
tion, that a great poet is but an ordinary genius.' 1 '' Let this sturdy Scotch 
metaphysician never approach Pegasus — he has to fear, not his wings, 
but his heels. If some have written on genius with a great deal too 
much, others have written without any. 



46 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

that they have not revealed it. The phenomena of pre- 
disposition in the mind are not more obscure and am- 
biguous than those which have been assigned as the 
sources of genius in certain individuals. For is it more 
difficult to conceive that a person bears in his constitu- 
tional disposition a germ of native aptitude which is 
developing itself to a predominant character of genius, 
which breaks forth in the temperament and moulds the 
habits, than to conjecture that these men of genius could 
not have been such but from accident, or that they differ 
only in their capacity f 

Every class of men of genius has distinct habits ; all 
poets resemble one another, as all painters and all mathe- 
maticians. There is a conformity in the cast of their 
minds, and the quality of each is distinct from the other, 
and the very faculty which fits them for one particular 
pursuit, is just the reverse required for another. If 
these are truisms, as they may appear, we need not 
demonstrate that from which we only wish to draw our 
conclusion. Why does this remarkable similarity pre- 
vail through the classes of genius? Because each, in 
their favourite production, is working with the same 
appropriate organ. The poetical eye is early busied 
with imagery ; as early will the reveries of the poetical 
mind be busied with the passions; as early will the 
painter's hand be copying forms and colours ; as early 
will the young musician's car wander in the creation of 
sounds, and the philosopher's head mature its medita- 
tions. It is then the aptitude of the appropriate organ, 
however it varies in its character, in which genius seems 
most concerned, and which is connatural and connate 
with the individual, and, as it was expressed in old days, 
is born with him. There seems no other source of 
genius ; for whenever this has been refused by nature, as 
it is so often, no theory of genius, neither habit nor educa- 
tion, have ever supplied its want. To discriminate be- 



PREDISPOSITION AND HABIT. 47 

tween the habit and the predisposition is quite impossible ; 
because whenever great genius discovers itself, as it can 
only do by continuity, it has become a habit with the 
individual; it is the fatal notion of habit having the 
power of generating genius, which has so long served to 
delude the numerous votaries of mediocrity. Natural or 
native power .is enlarged by art ; but the most perfect 
art has but narrow limits, deprived of natural disposition. 
A curious decision on this obscure subject may be 
drawn from an admirable judge of the nature of genius. 
Akenside, in that fine poem which forms its history, 
tracing its source, sang, 

Prom Heaven my strains begin, from Heaven descends 
The flame of genius to the human breast. 

But in the final revision of that poem, which he left 
many years after, the bard has vindicated the solitary and 
independent origin of genius, by the mysterious epithet, 

THE CHOSEN BEEAST. 

The veteran poet was, perhaps, schooled by the vicissi- 
tudes of his own poetical life, and those of some of his 
brothers. 

Metaphors are but imperfect illustrations in meta- 
physical inquiries ; usually they include too little or take 
in too much. Yet fanciful analogies are not willingly 
abandoned. The iconologists describe Genius as a 
winged child with a flame above its head; the wings 
and the flame express more than some metaphysical con- 
clusions. Let me substitute for " the white paper " of 
Locke, which served the philosopher in his description 
of the operations of the senses on the mind, a less arti- 
ficial substance. In the soils of the earth we may dis- 
cover that variety of primary qualities which we believe 
to exist in human minds. The botanist and the geolo- 
gist always find the nature of the strata indicative of 



48 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

its productions; the meagre light herbage announces thn 
poverty of the soil it covers, while the luxuriant growth 
of plants betrays the richness of the matrix in which the 
roots are fixed. It is scarcely reasoning by analogy to 
apply this operating principle of nature to the faculties 
of men. 

But while the origin and nature of that faculty which 
we understand by the term Genius remain still wrapt up 
in its mysterious bud, may Ave not trace its history in its 
votaries ? If Nature overshadow with her wings her 
first causes, still the effects lie open before us, and ex- 
perience and observation will often deduce from con- 
sciousness what we cannot from demonstration. If 
Nature, in some of her great operations, has kept back 
her last secrets; if Newton, even in the result of his 
reasonings, has religiously abstained from penetrating 
into her occult connexions, is it nothing to be her 
historian, although we cannot be her legislator ? 



CHAPTER V. 

Youth of genius. — Its first impulses may be illustrated by its subse- 
quent actions. — Parents have another association of the man of 
genius than we. — Of genius, its first habits. — Its melancholy. — Its 
reveries. — Its love of solitude. — Its disposition to repose. — Of a 
youth distinguished by his equals.— Feebleness of its first attempts. 
— Of genius not discoverable even in manhood. — The education of 
the youth may not be that of his genius. — An unsettled impulse, 
querulous till it finds its true occupation. — "With some, curiosity as 
intense a faculty as invention. — What the youth first applies to is 
commonly his delight afterwards. — Facts of the decisive character 
of genius. 

¥E are entering into a fairy land, touching only 
shadows, and chasing the most changeable lights ; 
many stories we shall hear, and many scenes will open on 



YOUTHFUL STUDIES. 49 

us ; yet though realities are but dimly to be traced in this 
twilight of imagination and tradition, we think that the 
first impulses of genius may be often illustrated by the 
subsequent actions of the individual ; and whenever we 
find these in perfect harmony, it will be difficult to con- 
vince us that there does not exist a secret connexion 
between those first impulses and these last actions. 

Can we then trace in the faint lines of his youth an 
unsteady outline of the man ? In the temperament of 
genius may we not reasonably look for certain indica- 
tions or predispositions, announcing the permanent 
character ? Is not great sensibility born with its irrita- 
ble fibres ? Will not the deep retired character cling to 
its musings ? And the unalterable being of intrepidity 
and fortitude, will he not, commanding even amidst his 
sports, lead on his equals ? The boyhood of Cato was 
marked by the sternness of the man, observable in his 
speech, his countenance, and his puerile amusements ; 
and Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, Gray, and others, be- 
trayed the same early appearance of their intellectual 
vigour and precocity of character. 

The virtuous and contemplative Boyle imagined that 
he had discovered in childhood that disposition of mind 
which indicated an instinctive ingenuousness. An inci- 
dent which he relates, evinced, as he thought, that even 
then he preferred to aggravate his fault rather than 
consent to suppress any part of the truth, an effort which 
had been unnatural to his mind. His fanciful, yet strik- 
ing illustration may open our inquiry. "This trivial 
passage," the little story alluded to, " I have mentioned 
now, not that I think that in itself it deserves a relation, 
but because as the sun is seen best at his rising and his 
setting, so men's native dispositions are clearliest per- 
ceived whilst they are children, and when they are 
dying. These little sudden actions are the greatest dis- 
coverers of men's true humours." 
4 



50 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

Alfieri, that historian of the literary mind, was con- 
scious that even in his childhood the peculiarity and the 
melancholy of his character prevailed : a boyhood passed 

in domestic solitude i'vd the interior feelings of his impas- 
sioned character; and in noticing some incidents of a 
childish nature, this man of genius observes, " Whoever 
will reflect on these inept circumstances, and explore 
into the seeds of the passions of man, possibly may find 
these neither so laughable nor so puerile as they may 
appear." His native genius, or by whatever other term 
we may describe it, betrayed the wayward predisposi- 
tions of some of his poetical brothers: "Taciturn and 
placid for the most part, but at times loquacious and 
most vivacious, and usually in the most opposite ex- 
tremes ; stubborn and impatient against force, but most 
open to kindness, more restrained by the dread of repri- 
mand than by anything else, susceptible of shame to 
excess, but inflexible if violently opposed." Such is the 
portrait of a child of seven years old, a portrait which 
induced the great tragic bard to deduce this result from 
his own self-experience, that " man is a continuation of 
the child"* 

That the dispositions of genius in early life presage 
its future character, was long the feeling of antiquity. 
Cicero, in his " Dialogue on Old Age" employs a beauti- 
ful analogy drawn from Nature, marking her secret 
conformity in all things which have life and come from 
her hands ; and the human mind is one of her plants. 
" Youth is the vernal season of life, and the blossoms 
it then puts forth are indications of those future fruits 
which are to be gathered in the succeeding periods." 
One of the masters of the human mind, after much pre- 
vious observation of those who attended his lectures, 

* See in his Life, chap, iv., entitled Sviluppo dell 1 indole indicate da 
vari fattarelli. " Development of genius, or natural inclination, indi- 
cated by various little matters." 



YOUTHFUL STUDIES. 51 

would advise one to engage in political studies, then 
exhorted another to compose history, elected these to be 
poets, and those to be orators ; for Isocrates believed that 
Nature had some concern in forming a man of genius, and 
endeavoured to guess at her secret by detecting the first 
energetic inclination of the mind. This also was the prin- 
ciple which guided the Jesuits, those other great masters 
in the art of education. They studied the characteristics 
of their pupils with such singular care, as to keep a secret 
register in their colleges, descriptive of their talents, and 
the natural turn of their dispositions. In some cases they 
guessed with remarkable felicity. They described Fon- 
tenelle, adolescens omnibus numeris absolutus et inter dis- 
cipidos princeps, " a youth accomplished in every respect 
and the model for his companions;" but when they 
describe the elder Crebillon, puer ingeniosus sed in- 
signia nebulo, " a shrewd boy, but a great rascal," they 
might not have erred so much as they appear to have 
done ; for an impetuous boyhood showed the decision of 
a character which might not have merely and misanthro- 
pically settled in imaginary scenes of horror, and the 
invention of characters of unparalleled atrocity. 

In the old romance of King Arthur, when a cowherd 
comes to the king to request he would make his son 
a knight—" It is a great thing thou askest," said Arthur, 
who inquired whether this entreaty proceeded from him 
or his son. The old man's answer is remarkable — " Of 
my son, not of me ; for I have thirteen sons, and all 
these will fall to that labour I put them ; but this child 
will not labour for me for anything that I and my wife 
will do; but always he will be shooting and casting 
darts, and glad for to see battles, and to behold knights, 
and always day and night he desireth of me to be made 
a knight." The king commanded the cowherd to fetch 
all his sons ; " they were all shapen much like the poor 
man ; but Tor was not like none of them in shape and in 



52 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

countenance, for he was much more than any of them. 
And so Arthur knighted him." This simple tale is the 
history of genius — the cowherd's twelve sons were like 
himself, but the unhappy genius in the family, who per- 
plexed and plagued the cowherd and his wife and his 
twelve brothers, was the youth averse to the common 
labour, and dreaming of chivalry amidst a herd of cows. 

A man of genius is thus dropped among the people, 
and has first to encounter the difficulties of ordinary 
men, unassisted by that feeble ductility which adapts 
itself to the common destination. Parents are too often 
the victims of the decided propensity of a son to a Virgil 
or a Euclid ; and the first step into life of a man of 
genius is disobedience and grief. Lilly, our famous 
astrologer, has described the frequent situation of such 
a yoath, like the cowherd's son who would be a knight. 
Lilly proposed to his father that he should try his for- 
tune in the metropolis, where he expected that his learn- 
ing and his talents would prove serviceable to him ; the 
father quite incapable of discovering the latent genius 
of his son in his studious disposition, very willingly 
consented to get rid of him, for, as Lilly proceeds, 
"I could not work, drive the plough, or endure any 
country labour ; my father oft would say I was good for 
nothing" — words which the fathers of so many men of 
genius have repeated.* 

In reading the memoirs of a man of genius, we often 
reprobate the domestic persecutions of those who op- 

* The father of Sir Joshua Reynolds reproached him frequently in 
his boyish days for bis constant attention to drawing, and wrote on 
the back of one of his sketches the condemnatory words, " Done by 
Joshua out of pure idleness." Mignard distressed his father, the sur- 
geon, by sketching the expressive faces of his patients instead of 
attending to their diseases ; and our own Opie, when a boy, and 
working with his father at his business as a carpenter, used fre- 
quently to excite his anger by drawing with red chalk on the deal 
boards he had carefully planed for his trade. — Ed. 



YOUTHFUL STUDIES. 53 

posed his inclinations. No poet bnt is moved with 
indignation at the recollection of the tutor at the Port 
Royal thrice burning the romance which Racine at 
length got by heart; no geometrician but bitterly in- 
veighs against the father of Pascal for not suffering him 
to study Euclid, which he at length understood without 
studying. The father of Petrarch cast to the flames the 
poetical library of his son, amidst the shrieks, the groans, 
and the tears of the youth. Yet this burnt-offering 
neither converted Petrarch into a sober lawyer, nor 
deprived him of the Roman laurel. The uncle of Alfieri 
for more than twenty years suppressed the poetical char- 
acter of this noble bard ; he was a poet without knowing 
how to write a verse, and Nature, like a hard creditor, 
exacted, with redoubled interest, all the genius which 
the uncle had so long kept from her. These are the 
men whose inherent impulse no human opposition, and 
even no adverse education, can deter from proving them 
to be great men. 

Let us, however, be just to the parents of a man of 
genius ; they have another association of ideas respect- 
ing him than ourselves. We see a great man, they a 
disobedient child ; we track him through his glory, they 
are wearied by the sullen resistance of one who is 
obscure and seems useless. The career of genius is 
rarely that of fortune or happiness ; and the father, who 
himself may not be insensible to glory, dreads lest his 
son be found among that obscure multitude, that popu- 
lace of mean artists, self-deluded, yet self-dissatisfied, 
who must expire at the barriers of mediocrity. 

If the youth of genius be struggling with a concealed 
impulse, he will often be thrown into a train of secret 
instruction which no master can impart. Hippocrates 
profoundly observed, that " our natures have not been 
taught us by any master." The faculty which the youth 
of genius displays in after-life may exist long ere it is 



5-i LITERARY CHARACTER. 

perceived ; and it will only make its own what is homoge- 
neous with itself. We may often observe how the mind 
of this youth stubbornly rejects whatever is contrary to 
its habits, and alien to its affections. Of a'solitary char- 
acter, for solitariness is the wild nurse of his Contempla- 
tions, he is fancifully described by one of the race — and 
here fancies are facts : 

He is retired as noon-tide dew, 
Or fountain in a noon-day grove. 

The romantic Sidney exclaimed, " Eagles fly alone, 
and they are but sheep which always herd together." 

As yet this being, in the first rudiments of his sensa- 
tions, is touched by rapid emotions, and disturbed by a 
vague restlessness ; for him the images of nature are yet 
dim, and he feels before he thinks; for imagination pre- 
cedes reflection. One truly inspired unfolds the secret 
story — 

Endow'd with all that Nature can bestow, 

The child of fancy oft in silence bends 

O'er the mixt treasures of his pregnant breast 

"With conscious pride. From thence he oft resolves 

To frame he knows not what excelling things ; 

And win he knows not what sublime reward 

Of praise and wonder ! 

But the solitude of the youth of genius has a local in- 
fluence ; it is full of his own creations, of his unmarked 
passions, and his uncertain thoughts. The titles which 
he gives his favourite haunts often intimate the bent of 
his mind — its employment, or its purpose ; as Petrarch 
called his retreat Jjinternum, after that of his hero 
Scipio ; and a young poet, from some favourite descrip- 
tion in Cowley, called a spot he loved to muse in, " Cow- 
ley's Walk." 

A temperament of this kind has been often mistaken 



TOUTHFUL STUDIES. 55 

for melancholy.* "When the intermission of my studies 
allowed me leisure for recreation," says Boyle of his early 
life, >; I ■would very often steal away from all company, 
and spend four or five hours alone in the fields, and 
think at random; making my delighted imagination 
the busy scene where some romance or other was daily 
acted.'' This circumstance alarmed his friends, who con- 
cluded that he was overcome with a growing melan- 
choly. Alfieri found himself in this precise situation, 
and experienced these undefinable emotions, when, in 
his first travels at Marseilles, his lonely spirit only 
haunted the theatre and the seashore : the tragic drama 
was then casting its influences over his unconscious 
genius. Almost every evening, after bathing in the sea, 
it delighted him to retreat to a little recess where the 
land jutted out ; there would he sit, leaning his back 
against a high rock, which he tells us, " concealed from 
my sight every pail: of the land behind me, while before 
and around me I beheld nothing but the sea and the 
heavens : the sun, sinking into the waves, was lighting 
up and embellishing these two immensities ; there would 
I pass a delicious hour of fantastic ruminations, and 
there I should have composed many a poem, had I then 
known how to write either in verse or prose in any lan- 
guage whatever." 

An incident of this nature is revealed to us by the 
other noble and mighty spirit of our times, who could 
most truly exhibit the history of the youth of genius, and 
he has painted forth the enthusiasm of the boy Tasso : — 

* This solemnity of manner was aped in the days of Elizabeth and 
James I. by such as affected scholar-like habits, and is frequently 
alluded to by the satirists of the time. Ben Jonson, in his " Every 
Man in his Humour." delineates the "country gull," Master Stephen, 
as affecting "to be mightily given to melancholy," and receiving the 
assurance, "It's your only fine humour, sir; your true melancholy 
breeds your perfect fine wit, sir." — Ed. 



56 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

From my very birth 
My soul was drunk with love, which did pervade 
And mingle with whate'er I saw on earth ; 
Of objects all inanimate I made 
Idols, and out of wild and lonely flowers 
And rocks whereby they grew, a paradise, 
Where I did lay me down within the shado 
Of waving trees, and dream'd uncounted hours, 
Though I was chid for wandering. 

The youth of genius will be apt to retire from the 
active sports of his mates. Beat tie paints himself in his 
own Minstrel : 

Concourse, and noise, and toil he ever fled, 

Nor cared to mingle in the clamorous fray 
Of squabbling imps ; but to tho forest sped. 

Bossuet would not join his young companions, and flew 
to his solitary task, while the classical boys avenged 
themselves by a schoolboy's villanous pun : stigmatising 
the studious, application of Bossuet by the bos snetus 
aratro which frequent flogging had made them classical 
enough to quote. 

The learned Huet has given an amusing detail of the 
inventive persecutions of his schoolmates, to divert him 
from his obstinate love of study. " At length, in order to 
indulge my own taste, I would rise with the sun, while they 
were buried in sleep, and hide myself in the woods, that 
I might read and study in quiet;" but they beat the 
bushes, and started in his burrow the future man of eru- 
dition. Sir William Jones was rarely a partaker in the 
active sports of Harrow ; it was said of Gray that he was 
never a boy ; the unhappy Chatterton and Burns were 
singularly serious in youth;* as were Hobbes and Bacon. 

* Dr. Gregory says of Chatterton, " Instead of the thoughtless levity 
of childhood, he possessed the pensiveness, gravity, and melancholy of 
maturer life. He was frequently so lost in contemplation, that for many 
days together he would say but very little, and that apparently by con- 
straint. His intimates in the school were few, and those of the most 



YOUTHFUL STUDIES. 57 

Milton has preserved for us, in solemn numbers, his 
school-life — 

When I was yet a child, no childish play 
To me was pleasing: all my mind was set 
Serious to learn and know, and thence to do 
"What might be public good : myself I thought 
Born to that end, born to promote all truth, 
All righteous things. 

It is remarkable that this love of repose and musing is 
retained throughout life. A man of fine genius is rarely 
enamoured of common amusements or of robust exercises; 
and he is usually unadroit where dexterity of hand or 
eye, or trivial elegances, are required. This characteristic 
of genius was discovered by Horace in that Ode which 
schoolboys often versify. Beattie has expressly told us 
of his Minstrel, 

The exploit of strength, dexterity or speed 
To him nor vanity nor joy could bring. 

Alfieri said he could never be taught by a French dan- 
cing-master, whose art made him at once shudder and 
laugh. Horace, by his own confession, was a very awk- 
ward rider, and the poet could not always secure a seat 
on his mule: Metastasio humorously complains of his 
gun ; the poetical sportsman could only frighten the hares 
and partridges ; the truth was, as an elder poet sings, 

Instead of hounds that make the wooded hills 
Talk in a hundred voices to the riUs, 
I like the pleasing cadence of a line, 
Struck by the concert of the sacred Nine. 

And we discover the true " humour " of the indolent con- 
templative race in their great representatives Virgil and 
Horace. When they accompanied Mecsenas into the 

serious cast." Of Burns, his schoolmaster, Mr. Murdoch, says — " Rob- 
ert's countenance was generally grave, and expressive of a serious, con 
templative, and thoughtful mind." — Ed. 



58 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

country, while the minister amused himself at tennis, 
the two bards reposed on a vernal bank amidst the fresh- 
ness of the shade. The younger Pliny, who was so per- 
fect a literary character, was charmed by the Roman 
mode of hunting, or rather fowling by nets, which admit- 
ted him to sit a whole day with his tablets and stylus; 
so, says he, "should I return with empty nets, my tab- 
lets may at least be full." Thomson was the hero of his 
own " Castle of Indolence;" and the elegant Waller in- 
fuses into his luxurious verses the true feeling: 

Oh, Low I long my careless limbs to lay 
Under the plantano shade, and all the day 
Invoke the Muses and improve my vein. 

The youth of genius, whom Beattie has drawn after 
himself, and I after observation, a poet of great genius, 
as I understand, has declared to be " too effeminate 
and timid, and too much troubled with delicate nerves. 
The greatest poets of all countries," he continues, " have 
been men eminently endowed with bodily powers, and 
rejoiced and excelled in all manly exercises^ May not 
our critic of northern habits have often mistaken the art 
of the great poets in describing such " manly exercises 
or bodily powers," for the proof of their " rejoicing and 
excelling in them ?" Poets and artists, from their habits, 
are not usually muscular and robust.* Continuity of 
thought, absorbing reverie, and sedentary habits, will 
not combine with corporeal skill and activity. There is 
also a constitutional delicacy which is too often the 
accompaniment of a fine intellect. The inconveniences 

* "Dr. Currie, in his "Life of Burns," has a passage which may be 
quoted here: "Though by nature of an athletic form, Burns had in 
his constitution the peculiarities and the delicacies that belong to the 
temperament of genius. He was liable, from a very early period of 
life, to that interruption in the process of digestion which arises from 
deep and anxious thought, aud which is sometimes the effect, and 
sometimes the cause, of depression of spirits.'' — Ed. 



EARLY HABITS. 5£ 

attached to the inferior sedentary labourers are participa- 
ted in by men of genius ; the analogy is obvious, and their 
fate is common. Literary men may be included in Ra- 
mazzini's "Treatise on the Diseases of Artizans." Rous- 
seau has described the labours of the closet as enervating 
men, and weakening the constitution, while study wears 
the whole machinery of man, exhausts the spirits, de- 
stroys his strength, and renders him pusillanimous.* But 
there is a higher principle which guides us to declare, 
that men of genius should not excel in " all manly exer- 
cises." Seneca, whose habits were completely literary, 
admonishes the man of letters that " Whatever amuse- 
ment he chooses, he should not slowly return from those 
of the body to the mind, while he should be exercising 
the latter night and day." Seneca was aware that "to 
rejoice and excel in all manly exercises," would in some 
cases intrude into the habits of a literary man, and some- 
times be even ridiculous. Mortimer, once a celebrated 
artist, was tempted by his athletic frame to indulge in 
frequent violent exercises ; and it is not without reason 
suspected, that habits so unfavourable to thought and 
study precluded that promising genius from attaining to 
the maturity of his talents, however he might have suc- 
ceeded in invigorating his physical powers. 

But to our solitude. So true is it that this love of 
loneliness is an early passion, that two men of genius of 
very opposite characters, the one a French wit and the 
other a French philosopher, have acknowledged that 
they have felt its influence, and even imagined that they 
had discovered its cause. The Abbe de St. Pierre, in 
his political annals, tells us, " I remember to have heard 
old Segrais remark, that most young people of both 
sexes had at one time of their lives, generally about 
seventeen or eighteen years of age, an inclination to 

* In the Preface to the " Narcisse." 



60 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

retire from the world. He maintained this to be a 
species of melancholy, and humourously called it the 
small-pox of the mind, because scarce one in a thousand 
escaped the attack. I myself have had this distemper, 
but am not much marked with it." 

But if the youth of genius be apt to retire from the 
ordinary sports of his mates, he will often substitute for 
them others, which are the reflections of those favourite 
studies which are haunting his young imagination, as 
men in their dreams repeat the conceptions which have 
habitually interested them. The amusements of such 
an idler have often been analogous to his later pursuits. 
Ariosto, while yet a schoolboy, seems to have been very 
susceptible of poetry, for he composed a sort of tragedy 
from the story of Pyramus and Thisbe, to be represented 
by his brothers and sisters, and at this time also de- 
lighted himself in translating the old French and Spanish 
romances. Sir William Jones, at Harrow, divided the 
fields according to a map of Greece, and to each school- 
fellow portioned out a dominion ; and when wanting a 
copy of the Tempest to act from, he supplied it from his 
memory; we must confess that the boy Jones was re- 
flecting in his amusements the cast of mind he displayed 
in his after-life, and evincing that felicity of memory and 
taste so prevalent in his literary character. Florian's 
earliest years were passed in shooting birds all day, and 
reading every evening an old translation of the Iliad : 
whenever he got a bird remarkable for its size or its 
plumage, he personified it by one of the names of his 
heroes, and raising a funeral pyre, consumed the body : 
collecting the ashes in an urn, he presented them to his 
grandfather, with a narrative of his Patroclus or Sar- 
pedon. We seem here to detect, reflected in his boyish 
sports, the pleasing genius of the author of Xuma Pom- 
pilius, Gonsalvo of Cordova, and William Tell. Bacon, 
when a child, was so remarkable for thoughtful observa- 



BOYHOOD. 61 

tion, that Queen Elizabeth used to call him " the young 
lord-keeper." The boy made a remarkable reply, when 
her Majesty, inquiring of him his age, he said, that " He 
was two years younger than her Majesty's happy reign." 
The boy may have been tutored ; but this mixture of 
gravity, and ingenuity, and political courtiership, un- 
doubtedly caught from his father's habits, afterwards 
characterised Lord Bacon's manhood. I once read the 
letter of a contemporary of Hobbes, where I found that 
this great philosopher, when a lad, used to ride on packs 
of skins to market, to sell them for his father, who was a 
fellmonger ; and that in the market-place he thus early 
began to vent his private opinions, which long after- 
wards so fully appeared in his writings. 

For a youth to be distinguished by his equals is per- 
haps a criterion of talent. At that moment of life, with 
no flattery on the one side, and no artifice on the other, 
all emotion and no reflection, the boy who has obtained 
a predominance has acquired this merely by native 
powers. The boyhood of Nelson was characterised by 
events congenial with those of his after-days ; and his 
father understood his character when he declared that, " in 
whatever station he might be placed, he would climb, if 
possible, to the top of the tree." Some puerile anecdotes 
which Franklin remembered of himself, betray the inven- 
tion and the firm intrepidity of his character, and even 
perhaps his carelessness of means to obtain a purpose. 
In boyhood he felt a desire for adventure ; but as his 
father would not consent to a sea life, he made the river 
near him represent the ocean ; he lived on the water, 
and was the daring Columbus of a schoolboy's boat. A 
part where he and his mates stood to angle, in time 
became a quagmire : in the course of one day, the infant 
projector thought of a wharf for them to stand on, and 
raised it with a heap of stones deposited there for the 
building of a house. With that sort of practical wis- 



62 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

dom, or Ulyssean cunning, which marked his mature 
character, Franklin raised his wharf at the expense of 
another's house. His contrivances to aid his puny- 
labourers, with his resolution not to quit the great work 
till it was effected, seem to strike out to us the in- 
vention and decision of his future character. But 
the qualities which would attract the companions of a 
schoolboy may not be those which are essential to fine 
genius. The captain or leader of his schoolmates is not 
to be disregarded ; but it is the sequestered boy who 
may chance to be the artist or the literary charac- 
ter. Some facts which have been recorded of men of 
genius at this period are remarkable. We are told by 
Miss Stewart that Johnson, when a boy at the free- 
school, appeared "a huge overgrown misshapen strip- 
ling ," but was considered as a stupendous stripling ; 
" for even at that early period of life, Johnson maintained 
his opinions with the same sturdy, dogmatical, and ar- 
rogant fierceness." The puerile characters of Lord Bo- 
lingbroke and Sir Robert Walpole, schoolfellows and 
rivals, were observed to prevail through their after-life ; 
the liveliness and brilliancy of Bolingbroke appeared in 
his attacks on Walpole, whose solid and industrious 
qualities triumphed by resistance. A parallel instance 
might be pointed out in two great statesmen of our own 
days ; in the wisdom of the one and the wit of the other 
— men whom nature made rivals, and time made friends 
or enemies, as it happened. A curious observer, in look- 
ing over a collection of the Cambridge poems, which 
were formerly composed by its students, has remarked 
that " Cowley from the first was quaint, Milton sublime, 
and Barrow copious." If then the characteristic dispo- 
sition may reveal itself thus early, it affords a principle 
which ought not to be neglected at this obscure period 
of youth. 

Is there then a period in youth which yields decisive 



BOYHOOD. 63 

marks of the character of genius ? The natures of men 
are as various as their fortunes. Some, like diamonds, 
must wait to receive their splendour from the slow 
touches of the polisher, while others, resembling pearls, 
appear at once born with their beauteous lustre. 

Among the inauspicious circumstances is the feeble- 
ness of the first attempts ; and we must not decide on 
the talents of a young man by his first works. Dry den 
and Swift might have been deterred from authorship 
had their earliest pieces decided their fate. Smollett, 
before he knew which way his genius would conduct 
him, had early conceived a high notion of his talents 
for dramatic poetry : his tragedy of the Regicide was 
refused by Garrick, whom for a long time he could 
not forgive, but continued to abuse our Roscius, through 
his works of genius, for having discountenanced his 
first work, which had none. Racine's earliest compo- 
sition, as we may judge by some fragments his son 
has preserved, remarkably contrasts with his wri- 
tings; for these fragments abound with those points 
and conceits which he afterwards abhorred. The ten- 
der author of "Andromache" could not have been 
discovered while exhaustino- himself in running after 
concetti as surprising as the worst parts of Cowley, in 
whose spirit alone he could have hit on this perplexing 
concetto, descriptive of Aurora : " Fille du Jour, qui nais 
devant ton pero !" — " Daughter of Day, but born before 
thy father !" Gibbon betrayed none of the force and 
magnitude of his powers in his " Essay on Literature," 
or his attempted " History of Switzerland." Johnson's 
cader.c*>d prose is not recognisable in the humbler sim- 
plicity of his earliest years. Many authors have begun 
unsuccessfully the walk they afterwards excelled in. 
Raphael, when he first drew his meagre forms under 
Perugino, had not yet conceived one line of that ideal 
beauty which one day he of all men could alone execute. 



G4 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

Who could have imagined, in examining the Dream of 
Raphael, that the same pencil could hereafter have poured 
out the miraculous Transfiguration? Or that, in the 
imitative pupil of Hudson, our country was at length to 
pride herself on another Raphael?* 

Even the manhood of genius may pass unobserved by 
his companions, and, like ./Eneas, he may be hidden in a 
cloud amidst his associates. The celebrated Faluns 
Maximus in his boyhood was called in derision "the 
little sheep," from the meekness and gravity of his dis- 
position, His Bedateness and taciturnity, his indifference 

to juvenile amusement, his slowness and difficulty in 
learning, and his ready submission to his equals, induced 
them to consider him as one irrecoverably stupid. The 
greatness of mind, unalterable courage, and invincible 
character, which Fabius afterwards displayed, they then 
imagined had lain concealed under the apparent contrary 
qualities. The boy of genius may indeed seem slow and 
dull even to the phlegmatic ; for thoughtful and observ- 
ing dispositions conceal themselves in timorous silent 
characters, who have not yet experienced their strength ; 
and that assiduous love, which cannot tear itself away 
from the secret instruction it is perpetually imbibing, 
cannot be easily distinguished from the pertinacity of the 
mere plodder. We often hear, from the early compan- 
ions of a man of genius, that at school he appeared heavy 
and unpromising. Rousseau imagined that the child- 
hood of some men is accompanied by this seeming and 
deceitful dulness, which is the sign of a profound genius ; 
and Roger Ascham has placed among " the best natures 

* Hudson was the fashionable portrait-painter who succeeded 
Kneller, and made a great reputation and fortune ; but he was a very 
mean artist, who merely copied the peculiarities of his predecessor 
without his genius. His stiff hard style was formality itself; but was 
approved in an age of formalism ; the earlier half of the last century.— 
Ed. 



BOYHOOD. 65 

for learning, the sad-natured and hard-witted child ;" that 
is, the thoughtful, or the melancholic, and the slow. The 
young painters, to ridicule the persevering labours of 
Domenichino, which were at first heavy and unpromising, 
called him "the great ox;" and Passeri, while he has 
happily expressed the still labours of his concealed genius, 
sua taciturna lentezza, his silent slowness, expresses his 
surprise at the accounts he received of the early life of 
this great artist. " It is difficult to believe, what many 
assert, that from the beginning, this great painter had a 
ruggedness about him which entirely incapacitated him 
from learning his profession ; and they have heard from 
himself that he quite despaired of success. Yet I cannot 
comprehend how such vivacious talents, with a mind so 
finely organised, and accompanied with such favourable 
dispositions for the art, would show such signs of utter 
incapacity ; I rather think that it is a mistake in the 
proper knowledge of genius, which some imagine indi- 
cates itself most decisively by its sudden vehemence, 
showing itself like lightning, and like lightning passing 
away." 

A parallel case we find in Goldsmith, who passed 
through an unpromising youth ; he declared that he was 
never attached to literature till he was thirty ; that poetry 
had no peculiar charms for him till that age ;* and, indeed, 
to his latest hour he was surprising his friends by pro- 
ductions which they had imagined he was incapable of 
composing. Hume was considered, for his sobriety and 
assiduity, as competent to become a steady merchant ; and 
it was said of Boileau that he had no great understanding, 
but would speak ill of no one. This circumstance of the 
character in youth being entirely mistaken, or entirely 
opposite to the subsequent one of maturer life, has been 

* This is a remarkable expression from Goldsmith : hut it is much 
more so when we hear it from Lord Byron. See a note in the follow- 
ing chapter, on " The First Studies," p. 81. 
5 



60 LITERARY CHARACTER 

noticed of many. Even a discerning parent or master 
has entirely failed to deveiope the genius of the youth, 
who has afterwards ranked among eminent men; we 
ought as little to decide from early unfavourable appear- 
ances, as from inequality of talent. The great Isaac 
Barrow's father used to say, that if it pleased God to 
take from him any of his children, he hoped it might be 
Isaac, as the least promising; and during the three years 
Barrow passed at the Charter-house, he was remarkable 
only for the utter negligence of his studies and of his 
person. The mother of Sheridan, herself a literary 
female, pronounced early that lie was the dullest and 
most hopeless of her sons. Bodiner, at the head of the 
literary class in Switzerland, who had so frequently dis- 
covered and animated the literary youths of his country, 
could never detect the latent genius of Gesner : after a 
repeated examination of the young man, he put his 
parents in desj:)air with the hopeless award that a mind 
of so ordinary a cast must confine itself to mere writing 
and accompts. One fact, however, Bodmer had over- 
looked when he pronounced the fate of our poet and 
artist — the dull youth, who could not retain barren words, 
discovered an active fancy in the image of things. While 
at his grammar lessons, as it happened to Lucian, he was 
employing tedious hours in modelling in wax, groups of 
men, animals, and other figures, the rod of the pedagogue 
often interrupted the fingers of our infant moulder, who 
never ceased working to amuse his little sisters with his 
waxen creatures, which constituted all his happiness. 
Those arts of imitation were already possessing the soul 
of the boy Gesner, to which afterwards it became so en- 
tirely devoted. 

Thus it happens that in the first years of life the educa- 
tion of the youth may not be the education of his genius ; 
he lives unknown to himself and others. In all these 
cases nature had dropped the seeds in the soil; but even 



BOYHOOD. 67 

a happy disposition must be concealed amidst adverse 
circumstances : I repeat, that genius can only make that 
its own which is homogeneous with its nature. It has 
happened to some men of genius during a long period of 
their lives, that an unsettled impulse, unable to discover 
the object of its aptitude, a thirst and fever in the tem- 
perament of too sentient a being, which cannot find the 
occupation to which only it can attach itself, has sunk 
into a melancholy and querulous spirit, weary with the 
burthen of existence ; but the instant the latent talent 
had declared itself, his first work, the eager offspring of 
desire and love, has astonished the world at once with 
the birth and the maturity of genius. 

We are told that Pelegrino Tibaldi, who afterwards 
obtained the glorious title of " the reformed Michael An- 
gelo," long felt the strongest internal dissatisfaction at 
his own proficiency, and that one day, in melancholy and 
despair, he had retired from the city, resolved to starve 
himself to death ; his friend discovered him, and having 
persuaded him to change his pursuits from painting to 
architecture, he soon rose to eminence. This story D'Ar- 
genville throws some doubt over ; but as Tibaldi during 
twenty years abstained from his pencil, a singular cir- 
cumstance seems explained by an extraordinary occur- 
rence. Tasso, with feverish anxiety pondered on five 
different subjects before he could decide in the choice of 
his epic ; the same embarrassmeut was long the fate of 
Gibbon on the subject of his history. Some have sunk 
into a deplorable state of utter languishment, from the 
circumstance of being deprived of the means of pursuing 
their beloved study, as in the case of the chemist Berg- 
man. His friends, to gain him over to the more lucra- 
tive professions, deprived him of his books of natural 
history ; a plan which nearly proved fatal to the youth, 
who with declining health quitted the university. At 
length, ceasing to struggle with the conflicting desire 



68 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

within him, his renewed enthusiasm for his favourite 
science restored the health he had lost in abandoning it. 

It was the view of the tomb of Virgil which so power- 
fully influenced the innate genius of Boccaccio, and fixed 
his instant decision. As yet young, and in the neighbour- 
hood of Naples, wandering for recreation, he reaehed the 
tomb of the Mantuan. Pausing before it, his youthful 
mind began to meditate. Struck by the universal glory of 
that great name, lie lamented his own fortune to be occu- 
pied by the obscure details of merchandise; already he 
sighed to emulate the fame of the Roman, and as Villani 
tells us, from that day he abandoned forever the occupa- 
tions of commerce, dedicating himself to literature. 
Proctor, the lost Phidias of our country, would often say, 
that he should never have quitted his mercantile situa- 
tion, but for the accidental sight of Barry's picture of 
" Venus rising from the Sea ;" a picture which produced 
so immediate an effect on his mind, that it determined 
him to quit a lucrative occupation. Surely we cannot 
account for such sudden effusions of the mind, and such 
instant decisions, but by the principle of that predispo- 
sition which only waits for an occasion to declare itself. 

Abundant facts exhibit genius unequivocally discover- 
ing itself in youth. In general, perhaps, a master-mind 
exhibits precocity. "Whatever a young man at first 
applies himself to, is commonly his delight afterwards. 
This remark was made by Hartley, who has related an 
anecdote of the infancy of his genius, which indicated the 
manhood. He declared to his daughter that the inten- 
tion of writing a book upon the nature of man, was con- 
ceived in his mind when he was a very little boy — when 
swinging backwards and forwards upon a gate, not more 
than nine or ten years old ; he was then meditating upon 
the nature of his own mind, how man was made, and for 
what future end. Such was the true origin, in a boy of 
ten years old, of his celebrated book on " The Frame, the 



EARLY BIAS. 69 

Duty, and the Expectation of Man." John Hunter con- 
ceived his notion of the principle of life, which to his 
last day formed the subject of his inquiries and experi- 
ments, when he was very young ; for at that period of 
life, Mr. Abernethy tell us, he began his observations on 
the incubated egg, which suggested or corroborated his 
opinions. 

A learned friend, and an observer of men of science, 
has supplied me with a remark highly deserving notice. 
It is an observation that will generally hold good, that 
the most important systems of theory, however late they 
may be published, have been formed at a very early 
period of life. This important observation may be veri- 
fied by some striking facts. A most curious one will be 
found in Lord Bacon's letter to Father Fulgentio, where 
he gives an account of his projecting his philosophy 
thirty years before, during his youth. Milton from early 
youth mused on the composition of an epic. De Thou 
has himself told us, that from his tender youth his mind 
was full of the idea of composing a history of his own 
times ; and his whole life was passed in preparation, and 
in a continued accession of materials for a future period. 
From the age of twenty, Montesquieu was preparing the 
materials of II Esprit des Loix, by extracts from the 
immense volumes of civil law. Tillemont's vast labours 
were traced out in his mind at the early age of nineteen, 
on reading Baronius ; and some of the finest passages in 
Racine's tragedies were composed while a pupil, wander- 
ing in the woods of the Port-Royal. So true is it that the 
seeds of many of our great literary and scientific works 
were lying, for many years antecedent to their being 
given to the world, in a latent state of germination.* 

* I need not to be reminded, that I am not worth mentioning among 
the illustrious men who have long formed the familiar subjects of my 
delightful researches. But with the middling as well as with the 
great, the same habits must operate. Early in life, I was struck by 



70 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

The predisposition of genius lias declared itself in 
painters and poets, who were such before they understood 
the nature of colours and the arts of verse ; and this 
vehement propensity, so mysteriously constitutional, may 
be traced in other intellectual characters besides those 
which belong to the class of imagination. It was said 
that Pitt was born a minister; the late Dr. Shaw I 
always considered as one bom a naturalist, and I know a 
great literary antiquary who seems to me to have been 
also bom such; for the passion of curiosity is as intense 
a faculty, or instinct, with some easts of mind, as is that 
of invention, with poets and painters: 1 confess that to 
me it is genius in a form in which genius has not yet been 
suspected to appear. One of the biographers of Sir 
Hans Sloane expresses himself in this manner: — "Our 
author's thirst for knowledge seems to have been born 
with him, so that his Cabinet of Rarities may be said to 
have commenced with his being." This strange meta- 
phorical style has only confused an obscure truth. 
Sloane, early in life, felt an irresistible impulse which 
inspired him with the most enlarged views of the pro- 
ductions of nature, and he exulted in their accomplish- 
ment ; for in his will he has solemnly recorded, that his 
collections were the fruits of his early devotion, having 
had from my youth a strong inclination to the study of 
plants and all other productions of nature. The vehe- 

the inductive philosophy of Bacon, and sought after a Moral Experi- 
mental Philosophy ; and I had then in my mind an observation of 
Lord Bolingbroke's, for I see I quoted it thirty years ago, that " Ab- 
stract or general propositions, though never so true, appear obscure or 
doubtful to us very often till they are explained by examples." So 
far back as in 1*793 I published "A Dissertation on Anecdotes," with 
the simplicity of a young votary ; there I deduced results, and threw 
out a magnificent project not very practicable. From that time to tho 
hour I am now writing, my metal has been running in this mould, 
and I still keep casting philosophy into anecdotes, and anecdotes into 
philosophy. As I began I fear I shall end. 



YOUTHFUL STUDIES. 71 

ment passion of Peiresc for knowledge, according to 
accounts which Gassendi received from old men who had 
known him as a child, broke out as soon as he had been 
taught his alphabet; for then his delight was to be 
handling books and papers, and his perpetual inquiries 
after their contents obliged them to invent something to 
quiet the child's insatiable curiosity, who was hurt when 
told that he had not the capacity to understand them. 
He did not study as an ordinary scholar, for he never 
read but with perpetual researches. At ten years of age, 
his passion for the studies of antiquity was kindled at 
the sight of some ancient coins dug up in his neighbour- 
hood ; then that vehement passion for knowledge " began 
to burn like fire in a forest," as Gassendi happily de- 
scribes the fervour and amplitude of the mind of this man 
of vast learning. Bayle, who was an experienced judge 
in the history of genius, observes on two friars, one of 
whom was haunted by a strong disposition to gene- 
alogical, and the other to geographical pursuits, that, 
" let a man do what he will, if nature incline us to cer- 
tain things, there is no preventing the gratification of 
our desire, though it lies hid under a monk's frock." It 
is not, therefore, as the world is apt to imagine, only 
poets and painters for whom is reserved this restless and 
impetuous propensity for their particular pursuits; I 
claim it for the man of science as well as for the man of 
imagination. And I confess that I consider this strong 
bent of the mind in men eminent in pursuits in which 
imagination is little concerned, and whom men of genius 
have chosen to remove so far from their class, as another 
gifted aptitude. They, too, share in the glorious fever 
of genius, and we feel how just was the expression 
formerly used, of " their thirst for knowledge." 

But to return to the men of genius who answer more 
strictly to the popular notion of inventors. We have 
Boccaccio's own words for a proof of his early natural 



72 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

tendency to tale-writing, in a passage of his genealogy 
of the gods: — "Before seven years of age, when as yet I 
bad met with no stories, was without a master, and hardly 

'knew my letters, I liad a natural talent for fiction, and 
produced some little tales." Thus the " Decamerone" 
was appearing much earlier than we suppose. Descartes, 
while yet a boy, indulged such habits of deep meditation, 
that he was nicknamed by his companions " The Philoso- 
pher," always questioning, and ever settling the cause 
and the effect. lie was twenty-live years of age before 
he left the army, but the propensity for meditation had 
been early formed; and he has himself given an account 
of the pursuits which occupied his youth, and of the pro- 
gress of his genius; of the secret Btruggle which he so 
long maintained with his own mind, wandering in con- 
cealment over the world for more than twenty years, 
and, as he says of himself, like the statuary labouring to 
draw out a Minerva from the marble block. Michael 
Angelo, as yet a child, wherever he went, busied himself 
in drawing ; and when his noble parents, hurt that a man 
of genius was disturbing the line of their ancestry, forced 
him to relinquish the pencil, the infant artist flew to the 
chisel : the art which was in his soul would not allow of 
idle hands. Lope de Vega, Velasquez, Ariosto, and 
Tasso, are all said to have betrayed at their school-tasks 
the most marked indications of their subsequent charac- 
teristics. 

This decision of the impulse of genius is apparent in 
Murillo. This young artist was undistinguished at the 
place of his birth. A brother artist returning home from 
London, where he had studied under Van Dyk, surprised 
Murillo by a chaste, and to him hitherto unknown, man- 
ner. Instantly he conceived the project of quitting his 
native Seville and flying to Italy — the fever of genius 
broke forth with all its restlessness. But he was desti- 
tute of the most ordinary means to pursue a journey, and 



YOUTHFUL STUDIES. 73 

forced to an expedient, he purchased a piece of canvas, 
which dividing into parts, he painted on each figures of 
saints, landscapes, and flowers — an humble merchandise 
of art adapted to the taste and devout feelings of the 
times, and which were readily sold to the adventurers to 
the Indies. With these small means he departed, having 
communicated his project to no one except to a beloved 
sister, whose tears could not prevail to keep the lad at 
home ; the impetuous impulse had blinded him to the 
perils and the impracticability of his wild project. He 
reached Madrid, where the great Velasquez, his country- 
man, was struck by the ingenuous simplicity of the youth, 
who urgently requested letters for Rome ; but when that 
noble genius understood the purport of this romantic 
journey, Velasquez assured him that he need not proceed 
to Italy to learn the art he loved. The great master 
opened the royal galleries to the youth, and cherished 
his studies. Murillo returned to his native city, where, 
from his obscurity, he had never been missed, having 
ever lived a retired life of silent labour ; but this painter 
of nature returned to make the city which had not no- 
ticed his absence the theatre of his glory. 

The same imperious impulse drove Callot, at the age 
of twelve years, from his father's roof. His parents, from 
prejudices of birth, had conceived that the art of engrav- 
ing was one beneath the studies of their son ; but the boy 
had listened to stories of the miracles of Italian art, and 
with a curiosity predominant over any self-consideration, 
one morning the genius flew away. Many days had not 
elapsed, when finding himself in the utmost distress, with 
a gang of gipsies he arrived at Florence. A merchant 
of Nancy discovered him, and returned the reluctant boy 
of genius to his home. Again he flies to Italy, and again 
his brother discovers him, and reconducts him to his pa- 
rents. The father, whose patience and forgiveness were 
now exhausted, permitted his son to become the most 



74 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

original genius of French art — one who, in his viva- 
cious groups, the touch of his graver, and the natural 
expression of his figures, anticipated the creations of 
Hogarth. 

Facts of this decisive character are abundant. See the 
boy N an teuil hiding himself in a tree to pursue the de- 
lightful exercise »>f his pencil, while his parents are averse 
to their son practising his young art ! See Handel, in- 
tended for a doctor of the civil laws, and whom no pa* 
rental discouragement could deprive of his enthusiasm, 
for ever touching harpsichords, and having secretly con- 
veyed a musical instrument to a retired apartment, listen 
to him when, sitting through the night, he awakens his 
harmonious spirit! Observe Ferguson, the child of a 
peasant, acquiring the ail of reading without any one 
suspecting it, by listening to his father teaching Ids bro- 
ther ; observe him making a wooden watch without the 
slightest knowledge of mechanism; and while a shepherd, 
studying, like an ancient Chaldean, the phenomena of the 
heavens, on a celestial globe formed by his own hand. 
That great mechanic, Smeaton, when a child, disdained 
the ordinary playthings of his age ; he collected the tools 
of workmen, observed them at their work, and asked 
questions till he could work himself. One day, having 
watched some millwrights, the child was shortly after, to 
the distress of the family, discovered in a situation of ex- 
treme danger, fixing up at the top of a barn a rude wind- 
mill. Many circumstances of this nature occurred before 
his sixth year. His father, an attorney, sent him up to 
London to be brought up to the same profession ; but he 
declared that "the study of the law did not suit the bent 
of his genius " — a term he frequently used. He addressed 
a strong memorial to his father, to show his utter incom- 
petency to study law ; and the good sense of the father 
abandoned Smeaton " to the bent of his genius in his own 
way." Such is the history of the man who raised the 



YOUTHFUL STUDIES. 75 

Eddy stone Lighthouse, in the midst of the waves, like 
the rock on which it stands. 

Can we hesitate to believe that in such minds there 
was a resistless and mysterious propensity, "growing 
with the growth " of these youths, who seem to have 
been placed out of the influence of that casual excite- 
ment, or any other of those sources of genius, so frequently 
assigned for its production ? 

Yet these cases are not more striking than the one 
related of the Abbe La Caille, who ranked among the 
first astronomers of the age. La Caille was the son of 
the parish clerk of a village. At the age of ten years 
his father sent him every evening to ring the church 
bell, but the boy always returned home late : his father 
was angry, and beat him, and still the boy returned 
an hour after he had rung the bell. The father suspect- 
ing something mysterious in his conduct, one evening 
watched him. He saw his son ascend the steeple, ring 
the bell as usual, and remain there during an hour. 
When the unlucky boy descended, he trembled like one 
caught in the fact, and on his knees confessed that the 
pleasure he took in watching the stars from the steeple 
was the real cause which detained him from home. As 
the father was not born to be an astronomer, he flogged 
his son severely. The youth was found weeping in the 
streets by a man of science, who, when he discovered in 
a boy of ten years of age a passion for contemplating 
the stars at night, and one, too, who had discovered an 
observatory in a steeple, decided that the seal of Nature 
had impressed itself on the genius of that boy. Reliev- 
ing the parent from the son, and the son from the 
parent, he assisted the young La Caille in his passionate 
pursuit, and the event completely justified the prediction. 
How children feel a predisposition for the studies of 
astronomy, or mechanics, or architecture, or natural 
history, is that secret in nature we have not guessed. 



76 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

There may be a virgin thought as well as a virgin habit 
— nature before education — which first opens the mind, 
and ever afterwards is shaping its tender folds. Acci- 
dents may occur to call it forth, but thousands of youths 
have found themselves in parallel situations with Smea- 
ton, Ferguson, and La Caille, without experiencing their 
energies. 

The case of Clairon, the great French tragic actress, 
who seems to have been an actress before she saw a 
theatre, deserves attention. This female, destined to be 
a sublime tragedian, was of the lowest extraction ; the 
daughter of a violent and illiterate woman, who, with 
blows and menaces, was driving about the child all 
day to manual labour. "I know not," says Clairon, 
" whence I derive my disgust, but I could not bear the 
idea to be a mere workwoman, or to remain inactive in 
a corner." In her eleventh year, being locked up in a 
room as a punishment, with the windows fastened, she 
climbed upon a chair to look about her. A new object 
instantly absorbed her attention. In the house opposite 
she observed a celebrated actress amidst her family ; her 
daughter was performing her dancing lesson: the girl 
Clairon, the future Melpomene, was struck by the influ- 
ence of this graceful and affectionate scene. "All my 
little being collected itself into my eyes ; I lost not a 
single motion ; as soon as the lesson ended, all the 
family applauded, and the mother embraced the daugh- 
ter. The difference of her fate and mine filled me with 
profound grief; my tears hindered me from seeing any 
longer, and when the palpitations of my heart allowed 
me to re-ascend the chair, all had disappeared." This 
scene was a discovery ; from that moment Clairon knew 
no rest, and rejoiced when she could get her mother to 
confine her in that room. The happy girl was a divinity 
to the unhappy one, whose susceptible genius imitated 
her in every gesture and every motion; and Clairon 



YOUTHFUL STUDIES. 77 

soon showed the effect of her ardent studies. She 
betrayed in the common intercourse of life, all the graces 
she had taught herself; she charmed her friends, and 
even softened her barbarous mother; in a word, the 
enthusiastic girl was an actress without knowing what 
an actress was. 

In this case of the youth of genius, are we to conclude 
that the accidental view of a young actress practising her 
studies imparted the character of Clairon? Could a 
mere chance occurrence have given birth to those facul- 
ties which produced a sublime tragedian? In all arts 
there are talents which may be acquired by imitation 
and reflection, — and thus far may genius be educated; 
but there are others which are entirely the result of native 
sensibility, which often secretly torment the possessor, 
and which may even be lost from the want of develop- 
ment, dissolved into a state of languor from which many 
have not recovered. Clairon, before she saw the young 
actress, and having yet no conception of a theatre — for 
she had never entered one — had in her soul that latent 
faculty which creates a dramatic genius. " Had I not felt 
like Dido," she once exclaimed, " I could not have thus 
personified her !" 

The force of impressions received in the warm suscep- 
tibility Of the childhood of genius, is probably little 
known to us ; but we may perceive them also working 
in the moral character, which frequently discovers itself 
in childhood, and which manhood cannot always conceal, 
however it may alter. The intellectual and the moral 
character are unquestionably closely allied. Erasmus 
acquaints us, that Sir Thomas More had something ludi- 
crous in his aspect, tending to a smile, — a feature which 
his portraits preserve ; and that he was more inclined to 
pleasantry and jesting, than to the gravity of the chan- 
cellor. This circumstance he imputes to Sir Thomas 
More "being from a child so delighted with humour, 



78 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

that he seemed to be even born for it." And we know 
that he died as he had lived, with a jest on his lips. The 
hero, who came at length to regret that he had but one 
world to conquer, betrayed the majesty of his restless 
genius when but a youth. Had Aristotle been nigh 
when, solicited to join in the course, the princely boy re- 
plied, that "lie would run in no career where kings were 
not the competitors," the prescient tutor might have 
recognized in his pupil the future and successful rival of 
Darius and Porus. 

A narrative of the earliest years of Prince Henry, by 
one of his attendants, forms an authentic collection of 
juvenile anecdotes, which made me feel very forcibly 
that there are some children who deserve to have a biog- 
rapher at their side; but anecdotes of children are the 
rarest of biographies, and I deemed it a singular piece of 
good fortune to have recovered such a remarkable evi- 
dence of the precocity of character.* Professor Dugald 
Stewart has noticed a fact in Arnauld's infancy, which, 
considered in connexion with his subsequent life, affords 
a good illustration of the force of impressions received in 
the first dawn of reason. Arnauld, who, to his eightieth 
year, passed through a life of theological controversy, 
when a child, amusing himself in the library of the Cardi- 
nal Du Perron, requested to have a pen given to him. 
" For what purpose ?" inquired the cardinal. " To write 
books, like you, against the Huguenots." The cardinal, 
then aged and infirm, could not conceal his joy at the 
prospect of so hopeful a successor ; and placing the pen 
in his hand, said, " I give it you as the dying shepherd, 
Damoetas, bequeathed his pipe to the little Corydon." 
Other children might have asked for a pen — but to write 
against the Huguenots evinced a deeper feeling and a 
wider association of ideas, indicating the future polemic. 

* I have preserved this manuscript narrative in " Curiosities of 
Literature," vol. ii. 



YOUTHFUL STUDIES. f9 

Some of these facts, we conceive, afford decisive evi- 
dence of that instinct in genius, that primary quality of 
mind, sometimes called organization, which has inflamed 
a war of words by an equivocal term. We repeat that 
this faculty of genius can exist independent of education, 
and where it is wanting, education can never confer it : 
it is an impulse, an instinct always working in the char- 
acter of " the chosen mind ;" 

One with our feelings and our powers, 
And rather part of us, than ours. 

In the history of genius there are unquestionably many 
secondary causes of considerable influence in developing, 
or even crushing the germ — these have been of late often 
detected, and sometimes carried to a ridiculous extreme ; 
but among them none seem more remarkable than the 
first studies and the first habits. 



CHAPTER VI. 

The first studies. — The self-educated are marked by stubborn pecu- 
liarities. — Their errors. — Their improvement from the neglect or 
contempt they incur. — The history of self-education in Moses Men- 
delssohn. — Friends usually prejudicial in the youth of genius. — A 
remarkable interview between Petrarch in his first studies, and his 
literary adviser. — Exhortation. 

THE first studies form an epoch in the history of genius, 
and unquestionably have sensibly influenced its pro- 
ductions. Often have the first impressions stamped a 
character on the mind adapted to receive one, as the first 
step into life has often determined its walk. But this, 
for ourselves, is a far distant period in our existence, 



80 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

which is lost in the horizon of our own recollections, and 
is usually unobserved by others. 

Many of those peculiarities of men of genius which are 
not fortunate, ami some which have hardened the charac- 
ter in its mould, may, however, be traced to this period. 
Physicians tell us that there is a certain point in youth 
at which the constitution is formed, and on which the 
sanity of life revolves; the character of genius experi- 
ences a similar dangerous period. Early bad tastes, early 
peculiar habits, early defective instructions, all the ego- 
tistical pride of an untamed intellect, are those evil 
spirits which will dog genius t<> its grave. An early at- 
tachment to the works of Sir Thomas Browne produced 
in Johnson an excessive admiration of that Latinised 
English, which violated the native graces of the language; 
and the peculiar style of Gibbon is traced by himself "to 
the constant habit of speaking one language, and writing 
another. The first studies of Rembrandt affected his 
afterdabours. The peculiarity of shadow which marks 
all his pictures, originated in the circumstance of his 
father's mill receiving light from an aperture at the top, 
which habituated the artist afterwards to view all objects 
as if seen in that magical light. The intellectual Poussin, 
as Nicholas has been called, could never, from an early 
devotion to the fine statues of antiquity, extricate his 
genius on the canvas from the hard forms of marble ; he 
sculptured with his pencil ; and that cold austerity of 
tone, still more remarkable in his last pictures, as it be- 
came mannered, chills the spectator on a first glance. 
When Pope was a child, he found in his mother's closet a 
small library of mystical devotion ; but it was not sus- 
pected, till the fact was discovered, that the effusions of 
love and religion poured forth in his "Eloisa" were 
caught from the seraphic raptures of those erotic mystics, 
who to the last retained a place in his library among the 
classical bards of antiquity. The accidental perusal of 



YOUTHFUL STUDIES. 81 

Quintus Curtius first made Boyle, to use his own words, 
" in love with other than pedantic books, and conjured 
up in him an unsatisfied appetite of knowledge ; so that 
he thought he owed more to Quintus Curtius than did 
Alexander." From the perusal of Rycaut's folio of Turk- 
ish history in childhood, the noble and impassioned bard 
of our times retained those indelible impressions which 
gave life and motion to the " Giaour," " the Corsair," 
and "Alp." A voyage to the country produced the 
scenery. Kycaut only communicated the impulse to a 
mind susceptible of the poetical character ; and without 
this Turkish history we should still have had the poet.* 

The influence of first studies in the formation of the 
character of genius is a moral phenomenon which has not 
sufficiently attracted our notice. Franklin acquaints us 
that, when young and wanting books, he accidentally 

* The following manuscript note by Lord Byron on this passage, 
cannot fail to interest the lovers of poetry, as well as the inquirers into 
the history of the human mind. His lordship's recollections of his first 
readings will not alter the tendency of my conjecture ; it only proves 
that he had read much more of Eastern history and manners than By- 
caut's folio, which probably led to this class of books : 

"Knolles — Cantemir — De Tott — Lady M. W. Montagu — Hawkins's 
translation from Mignot's History of the Turks — The Arabian Nights — 
all travels or histories or books upon the East I could meet with I had 
read, as well as Kycaut, before I was ten years old. I think the Ara- 
bian Nights first. After these I preferred the history of naval actions, 
Don Quixote, and Smollett's novels, particularly Eoderick Eandom, 
and I was passionate for the Eoman history. 

il "When a boy I could never bear to read any poetry whatever with- 
out disgust and reluctance." — MS. note by Lord Byron. Latterly Lord 
Byron acknowledged in a conversation held in Greece with Count 
G-amba. not long before he died, " The Turkish History was one of the 
first books that gave me pleasure when a child ; and I believe it had 
much influence on my subsequent wishes to visit the Levant; and 
gave perhaps the Oriental colouring which is observed in my poetry." 

I omitted the following note in my last edition, but I shall now pre- 
serve it, as it may enter into the history of his lordship's character: 

" When I was in Turkey I was oftener tempted to turn Mussulman 
than poet, and have 'Tien regretted since that I did not. 1818." 
6 



82 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

found De Foe's " Essay on Projects," from which work 
impressions were derived which afterwards influenced 
some of the principal events of his life. The lectures of 
Reynolds probably originated in the essays of Richard- 
son. It is acknowledged that these first made him a 
painter, and not long afterwards an author ; and it is said 
that many of the principles in his lectures may be traced 
in those firsl b1 udies. Many were the indelible and glow- 
ing impressions canghl by the ardent Reynolds from 
those bewildering pages of enthusiasm! Sir Walter 
Raleigh, according to a family tradition, when a young 
man, was perpetually reading and conversing on the dis- 
coveries of Columbus, and the conquests of Cortez and 
Pizarro. His character, as well as the great events of 
his life, seem to have been inspired by his favourite his- 
tories; to pass beyond the discoveries of the Spaniards 
became a passion, and the vision of his life. It is 
formally testified that, from a copy of Vegetius de He 
Militari, in the school library of St. Paul's, Marlborough 
imbibed his passion for a military life. If he could not 
understand the text, the prints were, in such a mind, suffi- 
cent to awaken the passion for military glory. Rousseau 
in early youth, full of his Plutarch, while he was also 
devouring the trash of romances, could only conceive 
human nature in the colossal forms, or be affected by the 
infirm sensibility of an imagination mastering all his 
faculties; thinking like a Roman, and feeling like a 
Sybarite. The same circumstance happened to Catherine 
Macauley, who herself has told us how she owed the bent 
of her character to the early reading of the Roman 
historians; but combining Roman admiration with En- 
glish faction, she violated truth in English characters, and 
exaggerated romance in her Roman. But the permanent 
effect of a solitary bias in the youth of genius, impelling 
the whole current of his after-life, is strikingly displayed 
in the remarkable character of Archdeacon Blackburne, 



ARCHDEACON BLACKBURNE. 83 

the author of the famous " Confessional," and the curious 
"Memoirs of Hollis," written with such a republican 
, fierceness. 

I had long considered the character of our archdeacon 
as a lusus politious et theologicus. Having subscribed to 
the Articles, and enjoying the archdeaconry, he was 
writing against subscription and the whole hierarchy with 
a spirit so irascible and caustic, that one would have 
suspected that, like Prynne and Bastwick, the archdeacon 
had already lost both his ears ; while his antipathy to 
monarchy might have done honour to a Roundhead of 
the Eota Club. The secret of these volcanic explosions 
was only revealed in a letter accidentally preserved. In 
the youth of our spirited archdeacon, when fox-hunting 
was his deepest study, it happened at the house of a 
relation, that on a rainy day he fell, among other garret 
lumber, on some worm-eaten volumes which had once 
been the careful collections of his great-grandfather, an 
Oliverian justice. " These," says he, " I conveyed to my 
lodging-room, and there became acquainted with the 
manners and principles of many excellent old Puritans, 
and then laid the foundation of my own." The enigma 
is now solved ! Archdeacon Blackburne, in his seclusion 
in Yorkshire amidst the Oliverian justice's library, shows 
that we are in want of a Cervantes but not of a Quixote, 
and Yorkshire might yet be as renowned a country as 
La Mancha ; for political romances, it is presumed, may 
be as fertile of ridicule as any of the folios of chivalry. 

We may thus mark the influence through life of those 
first unobserved impressions on the character of genius, 
which every author has not recorded. 

Education, however indispensable in a cultivated age, 
produces nothing on the side of genius. Where educa- 
tion ends, genius often begins. Gray was asked if he 
recollected when he first felt the strong predilection to 
poetry ; he replied that, " he believed it was when he 



84: LITERARY CHARACTER. 

began to read Virgil for his own amusement, and not in 
school hours as a task." Such is the force of self-educa- 
tion in genius, that the celebrated physiologist, John, 
Hunter, who was entirely self-educated, evinced such 
penetration in his anatomical discoveries, that he has 
brought into notice passages from writers he was unable 
to read, and which had been overlooked by profound 
scholars.* 

That the education of genius must be its own work, we 
may appeal to every one of the family. It is not always 
fortunate, for many die amidst a waste of talents and the 
wreck of mind. 

Many a soul sublime 
Has felt the influence of malignant star 

An unfavourable position in society is a usual obstruc- 
tion in the course of this self-education ; and a man of 
genius, through half his life, has held a contest with a 
bad, or with no education. There is a race of the late- 
taught, who, with a capacity of leading in the first rank, 
are mortified to discover themselves only on a level with 
their contemporaries. AVinckelmann, who passed his youth 
in obscure misery as a village schoolmaster, paints feel- 
ings which strikingly contrast with his avocations. " I 
formerly filled the office of a schoolmaster with the great- 
est punctuality ; and I taught the A, B, C, to children 
with filthy heads, at the moment I was aspiring after the 
knowledge of the beautiful, and meditating, low to my- 
self, on the similes of Homer ; then I said to myself, as I 
still say, l Peace, my soul, thy strength shall surmount 

* Life of John Hunter, by Dr. Adams, p. 59, where the case is curi- 
ously illustrated. [The writer therein defends Hunter from a charge 
of plagiarism from the Greek writers, who had studied accurately 
certain phases of disease, which had afterwards been " overlooked by 
the most profound scholars for nearly two thousand years,'' until John 
Hunter by his own close observation had assumed similar conclusions.] 



SELF-EDUCATION". 85 

thy cares.' " The obstructions of so unhappy a self-edu- 
cation essentially injured his ardent genius, and long he 
secretly sorrowed at this want of early patronage, and 
these habits of life so discordant with the habits of his 
mind. "I am unfortunately one of those whom the 
Greeks named d<J>tiia$eiq, sero sapientes, the late-learned, 
for I have appeared too late in the world and in Italy. 
To have done something, it was necessary that I should 
have had an education analogous to my pursuits, and at 
your age." This class of the late-learned is a useful dis- 
tinction. It is so with a sister-art ; one of the greatest 
musicians of our country assures me that the ear is as 
latent with many ; there are the late-learned even in the 
musical world. Budseus declared that he was both " self- 
taught and late-taught." 

The self-educated are marked by stubborn peculiari- 
ties. Often abounding with talent, but rarely with 
talent in its place, their native prodigality has to dread 
a plethora of genius and a delirium of wit : or else, hard 
but irregular students rich in acquisition, they find how 
their huddled knowledge, like corn heaped in a granary, 
for want of ventilation and stirring, perishes in its own 
masses. Xot having attended to the process of their 
own minds, and little acquainted with that of other men, 
they cannot throw out their intractable knowledge, nor 
with sympathy awaken by its softening touches the 
thoughts of others. To conduct their native impulse, 
which had all along driven them, is a secret not always 
discovered, or else discovered late in life. Hence it has 
happened with some of this race, that their first work 
has not announced genius, and their last is stamped with 
it. Some are often judged by their first work, and when 
they have surpassed themselves, it is long ere it is ac- 
knowledged. They have improved themselves by the 
very neglect or even contempt which their unfortunate 
efforts were doomed to meet ; and when once they have 



LTTERART CHJLRACTES. 

r a living bat un- 
wn wild but unregarded « 
nali: 

are akness, yet are 

-iasm w 
- 
with its oreal f the human 

soul ; it will work :icath the encumbrance of 

lost uncultivated mii 

lings ai. lultuou? 

» man of 

acecL* We may find a whole race of these self- 
Id romances, 
and the ancient balla ~ pean na -leep 

mai._ 

though possess' I estates. Banyan is 

the Spenser tire burned towards 

Ithough was rude and ru> 

Barry, the pain » be 

turned over by the connoisseur 1 j ;»r the artist 

who dar - jwbL That enthusiast, with a temper 

of mind resembling Rous- with coarser feelings, 

was the same creature of untamed imaginat! .med 

by the same passions, with the same fine intellect disor- 
dered, and the same forti: ul ; but he found his 
self-taught pen, like hif his g A 



Jne assertion I will venture to make, as suggested by my own 
::; .::.■:_ :-':..■■..::-:.. . - :. : .-.^: .:.:'■:.:.:: .:: 
..rare of man widen would have a far j -aster claim to their high 
:. : i .---;- .: ".'iv -". . '----.' -- :. -•'. - - ►. :': --i 

?h fulness of heart and intellect as burst forth in many a sim- 
ple page of George Fox and Jacob Behmen," — Mr. CoUrOgee Biogra- 
phia Litteraria, L 143. 

+ 1 en he attempted to engrave his own works, his 

ical Ubom : rofessional engraver. They have consequently 



"".-...zz g| 



TrZ-Zlri: r 




:r ki :Z-'-^Z Zi: ill--: :zi~. : -r-1 

:: ... - ._- : 

f genius. When, in his charae- 










7: 7 1 Li* Ir-:rir-T"= :.: :_r ;. : ;. .-■_-. 
. - . • :z : 11 . : 
ed to him the proud, feelings he 


•--' " : "-- '- 


." . " 


t sel£educated man, once Hsten- 

1: . ; — Z:zi Z7 Z: 1 iTriirl ;Z: :i: 






" - :Z ; :: Z :rrys i: '1: :Z- 
Z-riZr-r — t . ..- lisifr" :Zr 
e endowed with the susceptibil- 
the disposition he Binned Define 
1 Z ~7 -"_::-:". :ht ~:nng 
I -" - " : ^7. -Zt . -.--..-.- : "_7 
Muse and meditate, and inquire 


' 


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- _ ~ - 

.iri;. :.:-. 1 . 




: _ r7 "_ _ ". 
. \~r'_- "Zt " 

: :"7j7 1 :lr 

:7-:.7— . 




r ._ h- _._..- in :_e one ne 
>eaiity ? and in the other he dis- 
rith the one be waa "arm and 

. . _. H Zlr ScZ-t'I . . : 


- - = ~^ - 


- r-zii: 


kable instance in the character 
>n "whom liter*:, rv - e ruanT has 


:fi::-f . :_: 


_ . _ : ■: . . 7 


:::lr :: :Z.f 


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_7 ._ ■■__.: _ _r -Tractions 
_ :Zr ~ iZZ : 'lz ■ 


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iat, in the his: h ■- : men of 


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:r ..7 . j: . t-; !i : _ f ir-i — - - 


Z-i 


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5 ■■_ ~ b: - ' : " i ■ ... : "- / : ._: ! i: i~. _ - .. . : i 



::::::-:::: _ ^1, 



88 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

nonius, it is something like taking in the history of man 
the savage of Aveyron from his woods — who, destitute 
of a human language, should at Length create a model of 
eloquence; who, without the faculty of conceiving a 
figure, should at length be capable of adding to the 
demonstrations of Euclid ; and who, without a complex 
idea and with few sensations should at length, in the 

Buhlimest strain of metaphysics, open to the world a new 
view of the immortality of the soul ! 

Mendelssohn, the son of a poor rabbin, in a village in 
Germany, received an education completely rabbinical, 
and its nature must be comprehended, or the term of 
education would be misunderstood. The Israelites in 
Poland and Germany live with all the restrictions of 
their ceremonial law in an insulated state, and are not 
always instructed in the language of the country of their 
birth. They employ for their common intercourse a bar- 
barous or patois Hebrew ; while the sole studies of the 
young rabbins are strictly confined to the Talmud, of 
which the fundamental principle, like the Sonna of the 
Turks, is a pious rejection of every species of profane 
learning. This ancient jealous spirit, which walls in the 
understanding and the faith of man, was to shut out what 
the imitative Catholics afterwards called heresy. It is, 
then, these numerous folios of the Talmud which the 
true Hebraic student contemplates through all the sea- 
sons of life, as the Patuecos in their low valley imagine 
their surrounding mountains to be the confines of the 
universe. 

Of such a nature was the plan of Mendelssohn's first 
studies ; but even in his boyhood this conflict of study 
occasioned an agitation of his spirits, which affected his 
life ever after. Rejecting the Talmudical dreamers, he 
caught a nobler spirit from the celebrated Maimonides ; 
and his native sagacity was already clearing up the sur- 
rounding darkness. An enemy not less hostile to the 



MENDELSSOHN. 89 

enlargement of mind than voluminous legends, presented 
itself in the indigence of his father, who was compelled to 
send away the youth on foot to Berlin, to find labour 
and bread. 

At Berlin, Mendelssohn becomes an amanuensis to an- 
other poor rabbin, who could only still initiate him into the 
theology, the jurisprudence, and the scholastic philosophy 
of his people. Thus, he was as yet no farther advanced 
in that philosophy of the mind in which he was one day 
to be the rival of Plato and Locke, nor in that knowl- 
edge of literature which was finally to place him among 
the first polished critics of Germany. 

Some unexpected event occurs which gives the first 
great impulse to the mind of genius. Mendelssohn 
received this from the companion of his misery and his 
studies, a man of congenial but maturer powers. He 
was a Polish Jew, expelled from the communion of the 
orthodox, and the calumniated student was now a va- 
grant, with more sensibility than fortitude. But this 
vagrant was a philosopher, a poet, a naturalist, and a 
mathematician. Mendelssohn, at a distant day, never 
alluded to him without tears. Thrown together into the 
same situation, they approached each other by the same 
sympathies, and communicating in the only language 
which Mendelssohn could speak, the Polander voluntarily 
undertook his literary education. 

Then was seen one of the most extraordinary spectacles 
in the history of modern literature. Two houseless 
Hebrew youths might be discovered, in the moonlit 
streets of Berlin, sitting in retired corners, or on the 
steps of some porch, the one instructing the other, with 
a Euclid in his hand ; but what is more extraordinary, it 
was a Hebrew version, composed by the master for a 
pupil who knew no other language. Who could then 
have imagined that the future Plato of Germany was 
sitting on those steps ! 



90 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

The Polander, whose deep melancholy had settled on 

his heart, died — yet he had not lived in vain, since the 
electric spark that lighted up the soul of Mendelssohn 
had fallen from his own. 

Mendelssohn was now left alone ; his mind teeming with 
its chaos, and still master of no other language than that 
barren idiom which was incapable of expressing the ideas 
lie Mas meditating on. lie had scarcely made a step into 
the philosophy of hlfl age, and the genius of Mendelssohn 
had probably been lost to Germany, had not the singular- 
ity of his studies and the cast of his mind been detected 
by the sagacity of Dr. Bosch. The aid of this physician 
was momentous ; for he devoted several hours every day 
to the instruction of a poor youth, whose strong capacity 
he had the discernment to perceive, and the generous 
temper to aid. Mendelssohn was soon enabled to read 
Locke in a Latin version ; but with such extreme pain, 
that, compelled to search for every word, and to arrange 
their Latin order, and at the same time to combine meta- 
physical ideas, it was observed that he did not so much 
translate, as guess by the force of meditation. 

This prodigious effort of his intellect retarded his pro 
gress, but invigorated his habit, as the racer, by running 
against the hill, at length courses with facility. 

A succeeding effort was to master the living languages, 
and chiefly the English, that he might read his favourite 
Locke in his own idiom. Thus a great genius for meta- 
physics and languages was forming itself alone, without 
aid. 

It is curious to detect, in the character of genius, the 
effects of local and moral influences. There resulted 
from Mendelssohn's early situation certain defects in his 
Jewish education, and numerous impediments in his 
studies. Inheriting but one language, too obsolete and 
naked to serve the purposes of modern philosophy, he 
perhaps overvalued his new acquisitions, and in his 



criticism: of friends. 91 

delight of knowing many languages, lie with difficulty 
escaped from remaining a mere philologist ; while in his 
philosophy, having adopted the prevailing principles of 
Wolf and Baumgarten, his genius was long without the 
courage or the skill to emancipate itself from their rusty 
chains. It was more than a step which had brought him 
into their circle, but a step was yet wanting to escape 
from it. 

At length the mind of Mendelssohn enlarged in liter- 
ary intercourse : he became a great and original thinker 
in many beautiful speculations in moral and critical phi- 
losophy ; while he had gradually been creating a style 
which the critics of Germany have declared to be their 
first luminous model of precision and elegance. Thus a 
Hebrew vagrant, first perplexed in the voluminous laby- 
rinth of Judaical learning, in his middle age oppressed 
by indigence and malady, and in his mature life wrestling 
with that commercial station whence he derived his hum- 
ble independence, became one of the master-writers in 
the literature of his country. The history of the mind 
of Mendelssohn is one of the noblest pictures of the self- 
education of genius. 

Friends, whose prudential counsels in the business of 
life are valuable in our youth, are usually prejudicial in 
the youth of genius. The multitude of authors and 
artists originates in the ignorant admiration of their 
early friends ; while the real genius has often been dis- 
concerted and thrown into despair by the false judgments 
of his domestic circle. The productions of taste are 
more unfortunate than those which depend on a chain of 
reasoning, or the detail of facts ; these are more palpable 
to the common judgments of men; but taste is of such 
rarity, that a long life may be passed by some without 
once obtaining a familiar acquaintance with a mind so 
cultivated by knowledge, so tried by experience, and so 
practised by converse with the literary world, that its 



02 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

» 

prophetic feeling can anticipate the public opii 
When a young writer's first essay is shown, some, 
through mere inability of censure, see nothing but b 
ties; others, from mere imbecility, can sec none; and 
others, out of pure malice, see nothing but faults. " I 
was soon disgusted," says Gibbon, "with the modest 
practice of reading the manuscript to my friends. Of 
such friends some will praise for politeness, and some 
will criticise for vanity." Had several of our first 

writers set their fortunes on the east of their friends' 
opinions, we might have Lost some precious compositions. 
The friends of Thomson discovered nothing but faults 
in his early production-, one of which happened to be his 
noblest, the " Winter;" they just could discern that tl 
abounded in luxuriances, without being aware that they 
were the luxuriances of a poet. He had created a new 
school in art — and appealed from his circle to the public. 
From a manuscript letter of our poet's, written when 
employed on his " Summer," I transcribe his sentiments 
on his former literary friends in Scotland — he is writing 
to Mallet : " Far from defending these two lines, I damn 
them to the lowest depth of the poetical Tophct, prepared 
of old for Mitchell, Morris, Rook, Cook, Beckingham, and 
a long &c. Wherever I have evidence, or think I have 
evidence, which is the same thing, I'll be as obstinate as 
all the mules in Persia." This poet of warm affections 
felt so irritably the perverse criticisms of his learned 
friends, that they were to share alike a poetic Hell — prob- 
ably a sort of Dunciad, or lampoons. One of these 
" blasts " broke out in a vindictive epigram on Mitchell, 
whom he describes with a " blasted eye ;" but this critic 
literally having one, the poet, to avoid a personal reflec- 
tion, could only consent to make the blemish more 
active — 

"Why all not faults, injurious Mitchell ! why 
Appears one beauty to thy blasting eye ? 



CEITICISM OF FRIENDS. 93 

He again calls him " the planet-blasted Mitchell." Of 
another of these critical friends he speaks with more 
sedateness, but with a strong conviction that the critic, 
a very sensible man, had no sympathy with the poet. 
"Aikman's reflections on my writings are very good, 
but he does not in them regard the turn of my genius 
enough ; should I alter my way, I would write poorly. 
I must choose what appears to me the most significant 
epithet, or I cannot with any heart proceed." The 
" Mirror," * when periodically published in Edinburgh, 
was " fastidiously " received, as all " home-productions " 
are: but London avenged the cause of the author. 
When Swift introduced Parnell to Lord Bolingbroke, 
and to the world, he observes, in his Journal, "it is 
pleasant to see one who hardly passed for anything in 
Ireland, make his way here with a little friendly forward- 
ing." Montaigne has honestly told us that in his own 
province they considered that for him to attempt to 
become an author was perfectly ludicrous ; at home, says 
he, "I am compelled to purchase printers; while at a 
distance, printers purchase me." There is nothing more 
trying to the judgment of the friends of a young man 
of genius than the invention of a new manner : without 
a standard to appeal to, without bladders to swim, the 
ordinary- critic sinks into irretrievable distress; but 
usually pronounces against novelty. When Reynolds 
returned from Italy, warm with all the excellence of his 
art, and painted a portrait, his old master, Hudson, view- 
ing it, and perceiving no trace of his own manner, ex- 
claimed that he did not paint so well as when he left 
England ; while another, who conceived no higher excel- 

* This weekly journal was chiefly supported by the abilities of the 
rising young men of the Scottish Bar. Henry Mackenzie, the author 
of the "Man of Feeling," was the principal contributor. The pub- 
lication was commenced in January, 1779, and concluded May, 
1790.— Ed. 



94 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

lence than Kneller, treated with signal contempt the 
future Raphael of* England. 

If it be dangerous for a young writer to resign liiinself 
to the opinions of his friends, he also incurs some peril 
in passing them with inattention. lie wants a Quintilian. 
One mode to obtain such an invaluable critic is the culti- 
vation of his own judgment in a round of reading and 
meditation. Let him at once supply the marble and be 
himself the sculptor: let the great authors of the world 
be his gospels, and the best critics their expounders; 
from the one he will draw inspiration, and from the others 
he will supply those tardy discoveries in art which he 
who solely depends on his own experience may obtain too 
late. Those who do not read criticism will rarely merit 
to be criticised ; their progress is like those who travel 
without a map of the country. The more extensive an 
author's knowledge of what has been done, the greater 
will be his powers in knowing what to do. To obtain 
originality, and effect discovery sometimes requires but a 
single step, if we only know from what point to set for- 
wards. This important event in the life of genius has 
too often depended on chance and good fortune, and 
many have gone dowm to their graves without having 
discovered their unsuspected talent. Curran's predomi- 
nant faculty was an exuberance of imagination when 
excited by passion ; but when young he gave no evidence 
of this peculiar faculty, nor for several years, while a 
candidate for public distinction, was he aware of his par- 
ticular powers, so slowly his imagination had develop3d 
itself. It was when assured of the secret of his strength 
that his confidence, his ambition, and his industry were 
excited. 

Let the youth preserve his juvenile compositions, what 
ever these may be ; they are the spontaneous growth, and 
like the plants of the Alps, not always found in other 
soils; they are his virgin fancies. By contemplating 



JUVENILE WORKS. 95 

them, lie may detect some of his predominant habits, re- 
sume a former manner more happily, invent novelty 
from an old subject he had rudely designed, and often 
may steal from himself some inventive touches, which, 
thrown into his most finished compositions, may seem a 
happiness rather than an art. It was in contemplating 
on some of their earliest and unfinished productions, that 
more than one artist discovered with West that " there 
were inventive touches of art in his first and juvenile 
essay, which, with all his subsequent knowledge and ex- 
perience, he has not been able to surpass." A young 
writer, in the progress of his studies, should often recol- 
lect a fanciful simile of Dryden — 

As those who unripe veins in mines explore 
On the rich bed again the warm turf lay, 

Till time digests the yet imperfect ore ; 
And know it will be gold another day. 

The youth of genius is that " age of admiration" as 
sings the poet of " Human Life," when the spell breathed 
into our ear by our genius, fortunate or unfortunate, is — 
" Aspire !" Then we adore art and the artists. It was 
Richardson's enthusiasm which gave Reynolds the rap- 
tures he caught in meditating on the description of a 
great painter ; and Reynolds thought Raphael the most 
extraordinary man the world had ever produced. West, 
when a youth, exclaimed that " A painter is a com- 
panion for kings and emperors !" This was the feeling 
which rendered the thoughts of obscurity painful and in- 
supportable to their young minds. 

But this sunshine of rapture is not always spread over 
the spring of the youthful year. There is a season of 
self-contest, a period of tremors, and doubts, and dark- 
ness. These frequent returns of melancholy, sometimes 
of despondence, which is the lot of inexperienced genius, 
is a secret history of the heart, which has been finely 



96 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

conveyed to ns by Petrarch, in a conversation with John 
of Florence, to whom the young poet often resorted 
when dejected, to reanimate his failing powers, to con- 
fess his faults, and to confide to him his dark and waver- 
ing resolves. It was a question with Petrarch, whether 
he should not turn away from the pursuit of literary 
fame, by giving another direction to his life. 

"I went one day to John of Florence in one of those 
ague-fits of faint-heart edness which often happened to 
me; he received me with his accustomed kinds 
'What ails you?' said he, 'you seem oppressed with 
thought: if I am not deceived, something has happened 
to you.' 'You do not deceive yourself, my father (for 
thus I used to call him), and yet nothing newly lias hap- 
pened to me; but I come to confide to you that my old 
melancholy torments me more than usual. You know 
its nature, for my heart has always been opened to you; 
you know all which I have done to draw myself out of 
the crowd, and to acquire a name ; and surely not with- 
out some success, since I have your testimony in my 
favour. Are you not the truest man, and the best of 
critics, who have never ceased to bestow on me your 
praise — and what need I more ? Have you not often 
told me that I am answerable to God for the talents he 
has endowed me with, if I neglected to cultivate them ? 
Your praises were to me as a sharp spur : I applied my- 
self to study with more ardour, insatiable even of my 
moments. Disdaining the beaten paths, I opened a new 
road ; and I flattered myself that assiduous labour would 
lead to something great ; but I know not how, when I 
thought myself highest, I feel myself fallen ; the spring 
of my mind has dried up ; what seemed easy once, now 
appears to me above my strength; I stumble at every 
step, and am ready to sink for ever into despair. I re- 
turn to you to teach me, or at least advise me. Shall I 
for ever quit my studies ? Shall I strike into some v ■> 



PETRARCH'S LITERARY ADVISER. 97 

course of life ? My father, have pity on me ! draw me 
out of the frightful state in which I am lost.' I could 
proceed no farther without shedding tears. * Cease to 
afflict yourself, my son,' said that good man ; ' your con- 
dition is not so bad as you think : the truth is, you knew 
little at the time you imagined you knew much. The 
discovery of your ignorance is the first great step you 
have made towards time knowledge. The veil is lifted 
up, and you now view those deep shades of the soul 
which were concealed from you by excessive presump- 
tionr In ascending an elevated spot, we gradually dis- 
cover many things whose existence before was not sus- 
pected by us. Persevere in the career which you entered 
with my advice ; feel confident that God will not aban- 
don you: there are maladies which the patient does not 
perceive ; but to be aware of the disease, is the first step 
towards the cure.' " 

This remarkable literary interview is here given, that 
it may perchance meet the eye of some kindred youth 
at one of those lonely moments when a Shakspeare may 
have thought himself no poet, and a Raphael believed 
himself no painter. Then may the tender wisdom of a 
John of Florence, in the cloudy despondency of art, 
lighten up the vision of its glory ! 

Ingenuous Youth! if in a constant perusal of the 
master-writers, you see your own sentiments anticipated 
— if, in the tumult of your mind, as it comes in contact 
with theirs, new sentiments arise — if, sometimes, looking 
on the public favourite of the hour, you feel that within 
which prompts you to imagine that you could rival or 
surpass him — if, in meditating on the confessions of 
every man of genius, for they all have their confessions, 
you find you have experienced the same sensations from 
the same circumstances, encountered the same difficulties 
and overcome them by the same means; then let not 
your courage be lost in your admiration, but listen to 

7 



98 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

that " still small voice " in your heart which cries with 
Correggio and with Montesquieu, "Ed io anche son 
pittore !" 



CHAPTER VII. 

Of the irritability of genius. — Genius in society often in a state of 
suffering. — Equality of temper more prevalent among men of letters. 
— Of the occupation of making a great name. — Anxieties of the 
most successful. — Of the inventors. — Writers of learning. — Writers 
of taste. — Artists. 

THE modes of life 01 a man of genius, often tinctured 
by eccentricity and enthusiasm, maintain an eternal 
conflict with the monotonous and imitative habits of 
society, as society is carried on in a great metropolis, 
where men are necessarily alike, and where, in perpetual 
intercourse, they shape themselves to one another. 

The occupations, the amusements, and the ardour of 
the man of genius are at discord with the artificial 
habits of life ; in the vortexes of business, or the world 
of pleasure, crowds of human beings are only treading 
in one another's steps. The pleasures and the sorrows 
of this active multitude are not his, while his are not 
obvious to them ; and his favourite occupations strength- 
en his peculiarities, and increase his sensibility. Genius 
in society is often in a state of suffering. Professional 
characters, who are themselves so often literary, yield- 
ing to their predominant interests, conform to that 
assumed urbanity which levels them with ordinary 
minds; but the man of genius cannot leave himself 
behind in the cabinet he quits ; the train of his thoughts 
is not stopped at will, and in the range of conversa- 
tion the habits of his mind will prevail: the poet 
will sometimes muse till he modulates a verse; the 
artist is sketching what a moment presents, and a 



IRRITABILITY OF GENIUS. 99 

moment changes ; the philosophical historian is suddenly 
absorbed by a new combination of thought, and, placing 
his hands over his eyes, is thrown back into the Middle 
Ages. Thus it happens that an excited imagination, a 
high-toned feeling, a wandering reverie, a restlessness 
of temper, are perpetually carrying the man of genius 
out of the processional line of the mere conversationists. 
Like all solitary beings, he is much too sentient, and pre- 
pares for defence even at a random touch or a chance hit. 
His generalising views take things only in masses, while 
in his rapid emotions he interrogates, and doubts, and 
is caustic ; in a word, he thinks he converses while he is 
at his studies. Sometimes, apparently a complacent 
listener, we are mortified by detecting the absent man : 
now he appears humbled and spiritless, ruminating over 
some failure which probably may be only known to 
himself; and now haughty and hardy for a triumph he 
has obtained, which yet remains a secret to the world. 
£To man is so apt to indulge the extremes of the most 
opposite feelings : he is sometimes insolent, and some- 
times querulous ; now the soul of tenderness and tran- 
quillity, — then stung by jealousy, or writhing in aver- 
sion ! A fever shakes his spirit ; a fever which has 
sometimes generated a disease, and has even produced a 
slight perturbation of the faculties.* In one of those 

* I have given a history of literary quarrels from personal motives, 
in " Quarrels of Authors." p. 529. There we find how many contro- 
versies, in which the public get involved, have sprung from some sud- 
den squabbles, some neglect of petty civility, some unlucky epithet, or 
some casual observation dropped without much consideration, which 
mortified or enraged the genus irritdbile; a title which from ancient 
days has been assigned to every description of authors. The late Dr. 
TVells, who had some experience in his intercourse with many literary 
characters, observed, that "in whatever regards the fruits of their 
mental labours, this is universally acknowledged to be true. Some 
of the malevolent passions indeed frequently become in learned men 
more than ordinarily strong, from want of that restraint upon their ex- 
citement which society imposes." A puerile critic has reproached me 



100 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

manuscript notes by Lord Byron on this work, which I 
have wished to preserve, I find his lordship observing on 
the feelings of genius, that " the depreciation of the 
lowest of mankind is more painful than the applause of 
the highest is pleasing." Such is the confession of 
genius, and such its liability to hourly pain. 

Once we were nearly receiving from the hand of genius 
the most curious sketches of the temper, the irascible hu- 
mours, the delicacy of soul, even to its shadowiness, from 
the warm sbozzos of Burns, when he began a diary of the 
heart, — a narrative of characters and events, and a chro- 
nology of his emotions. It was natural for such a crea- 
ture of sensation and passion to project such a regular 
task,but quite impossible for him to get through it. The 
paper-book that he conceived would have recorded all 
these things turns out, therefore, but a very imperfect 
document. Imperfect as it was, it has been thought 
proper not to give it entire. Yet there we view a warm 
original mind, when he first stepped into the polished circles 
of society, discovering that he could no longer " pour out 
his bosom, his every thought and floating fancy, his very 
inmost soul, with unreserved confidence to another, with- 
out hazard of losing part of that respect which man de- 
serves from man ; or, from the unavoidable imperfections 
attending *human nature, of one day repenting his confi- 
dence." This was the first lesson he learned at Edinburgh, 
and it was as a substitute for such a human being that he 
bought a paper-book to keep under lock and key : " a 
security at least equal," says he, " to the bosom of any 
friend whatever." Let the man of genius pause over the 
fragments of this " paper-book ;" — it will instruct as much 
as any open confession of a criminal at the moment he is 
about to suffer. ]STo man was more afflicted with that 

for having drawn my description entirely from my own fancy : — I 
have taken it from life 1 See further symptoms of this disease at the 
close of the chapter on Self-praise in the present work. 



BURN'S DIARY. 101 

miserable pride, the infirmity of men of imagination, 
which is so jealously alive, even among their best friends, 
as to exact a perpetual acknowledgment of their powers. 
Our poet, with all his gratitude and veneration for " the 
noble Glencairn," was " wounded to the soul " because 
his lordship showed " so much attention, engrossing atten- 
tion, to the only blockhead at table ; the whole company 
consisted of his lordship, Dunderpate, and myself." 
This Dunderpate, who dined with Lord Glencairn, miglrfc 
have been a useful citizen, who in some points is of more 
value than an irritable bard. Burns was equally offended 
with another patron, who was also a literary brother, 
Dr. Blair. At the moment, he too appeared to be neg- 
lecting the irritable poet " for the mere carcass of great- 
ness, or when his eye measured the difference of their 
point of elevation ; I say to myself, with scarcely any 
emotion," (he might have added, except a good deal of 
painful contempt,) " what do I care for him or his pomp 
either ?" — " Dr. Blair's vanity is proverbially known 
among his acquaintances," adds Burns, at the moment 
that the solitary haughtiness of his own genius had en- 
tirely escaped his self-observation. 

This character of genius is not singular. Grimm tells 
of Marivaux, that though a good man, there was some- 
thing dark and suspicious in his character, which made 
it difficult to keep on terms with him ; the most innocent 
word would wound him, and he was always inclined to 
think that there was an intention to mortify him ; this 
disposition made him unhappy, and rendered his ac- 
quaintance too painful to endure. 

What a moral paradox, but what an unquestionable 
fact, is the wayward irritability of some of the finest 
geniuses, which is often weak to effeminacy, and capri- 
cious to childishness ! while minds of a less delicate tex- 
ture are not frayed and fretted by casual frictions ; and 
plain sense with a coarser grain, is sufficient to keep 



102 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

down these aberrations of their feelings. How mortify- 
ing is the list of— 

Fears of the bravo and follies of the wise I 

Many have been sore and implacable on an illusion to 
some personal defect — on the obscurity of their birth — on 
some peculiarity of habit ; and have suffered themselves 
to be governed in life by nervous whims and chimeras, 
equally fantastic and trivial. This morbid sensibility 
lurks in the temperament of genius, and the infection is 
often discovered where it is not always suspected. 
Cumberland declared that the sensibility of some men 
of genius is so quick and captious, that you must first 
consider whom they can be happy with, before you can 
promise yourself any happiness with them : if you bring 
uncongenial humours into contact with each other, all 
the objects of society will be frustrated by inattention to 
the proper grouping of the guests. Look round on our 
contemporaries ; every day furnishes facts which confirm 
our principle. Among the vexations of Pope was the 
libel of " the pictured shape ;"* and even the robust mind 
of Johnson could not suffer to be exhibited as " blinking 
Sam."f Milton must have delighted in contemplating 
his own person ; and the engraver not having reached 
our sublime bard's ideal grace, he has pointed his indig- 
nation in four iambics. The praise of a skipping ape 
raised the feeling of envy in that child of nature and 
genius, Goldsmith. Voiture, the son of a vintner, like 

* He was represented as an ill-made monkey in the frontispiece to 
a satire noted in "Quarrels of Authors," p. 286 (last edition). — Ed. 

f Johnson was displeased at the portrait Reynolds painted of him 
which dwelt on his near-sightedness ; declaring that " a man's defects 
should never be painted. 1 ' The same defect was made the subject of 
a caricature particularly allusive to critical prejudices in his " Lives of 
the Poets," in which he is pictured as an owl " blinking at the stars." 
—Ed. 



SENSITIVENESS OP GENIUS. 103 

our Prior, was so mortified whenever reminded of his 
original occupation, that it was bitterly said, that wine, 
which cheered the hearts of all men, sickened the heart 
of Yoiture. Akenside ever considered his lameness as an 
unsupportable misfortune, for it continually reminded 
him of the fall of the cleaver from one of his father's 
blocks. Beccaria, invited to Paris by the literati, ar- 
rived melancholy and silent, and abruptly returned home. 
At that moment this great man was most miserable from 
a fit of jealousy : a young female had extinguished all 
his philosophy. The poet Rousseau was the son of a 
cobbler ; and when his honest parent waited at the door of 
the theatre to embrace his son on the success of his first 
piece, genius, whose sensibility is not always virtuous, 
repulsed the venerable father with insult and contempt. 
But I will no longer proceed from folly to crime. 

Those who give so many sensations to others must 
themselves possess an excess and a variety of feelings. 
We find, indeed, that they are censured for their extreme 
irritability ; and that happy equality of temper so preva- 
lent among men op letteks, and which is conveniently 
acquired by men of the world, has been usually refused to 
great mental powers, or to fervid dispositions — authors 
and artists. The man of wit becomes petulant, the pro- 
found thinker morose, and the vivacious ridiculously 
thoughtless. 

When Rousseau once retired to a village, he had to 
learn to endure its conversation ; for this purpose he was 
compelled, to invent an expedient to get rid of his uneasy 
sensations. " Alone, I have never known ennui, even 
when perfectly unoccupied : my imagination, filling the 
void, was sufficient to busy me. It is only the inactive 
chit-chat of the room, when every one is seated face to 
face, and only moving their tongues, which I never could 
support. There to be a fixture, nailed with one hand on 
the other, to settle the state of the weather, or watch the 



104 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

flies about one, or, what is worse, to be bandying compli- 
ments, this to me is not bearable." He hit on the expe- 
dient of making lace-strings, carrying his working cush- 
ion in his visits, to keep the peace with the country 
gossips. 

Is the occupation of making a great name less anxious 
and precarious than that of making a great fortune? the 
progress of a man's capital is unequivocal to him, but 
that of the fame of authors and artists is for the greater 

pari of their lives of an ambiguous nature. They become 
whatever the minds or knowledge of others make them; 
they arc the creatures of the prejudices and the predispo- 
sitions of others, ami must Buffer from those precipitate 

judgments which are the result of such prejudices and 
such predispositions. Time only is the certain friend of 
literai'y worth, for time makes the world disagree among 
themselves; and when those who condemn discover that 
there are others who approve, the weaker party loses 
itself in the stronger, and at length they learn that the 
author was far more reasonable than their prejudices had 
allowed them to conceive. It is thus, however, that the 
regard which men of genius find in one place they lose in 
another. We may often smile at the local gradations of 
genius; the fervid esteem in which an author is held 
here, and the cold indifference, if not contempt, he en- 
counters in another place ; here the man of learning is 
condemned as a heavy drone, and there the man of wit 
annoys the unwitty listener. 

And are not the anxieties of even the most successful 
men of genius renewed at every work — often quitted in 
despair, often returned to with rapture ? the same agita- 
tion of the spirits, the same poignant delight, the same 
weariness, the same dissatisfaction, the same querulous 
languishment after excellence ? Is the man of genius an 
estveistor ? the discovery is contested, or it is not com- 
prehended for ten years after, perhaps not during his 



CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM. 105 

whole life ; even men of science are as children before 
him. Sir Thomas Bodley wrote to Lord Bacon, remon- 
strating with him on his new mode of philosophising. 
It seems the fate of all originality of thinking to be im- 
mediately opposed ; a contemporary is not prepared for 
its comprehension, and too often cautiously avoids it, 
from the prudential motive which turns away from a new 
and solitary path. Bacon was not at all understood at 
home in his own day ; his reputation — for it was not ce- 
lebrity — was confined to his history of Henry VII., and 
his Essays; it was long after his death before English 
writers ventured to quote Bacon as an authority; and 
with equal simplicity and grandeur, Bacon called himself 
" the servant of posterity," Montesquieu gave his Esprit 
des Loix to be read by that man in France, whom he 
conceived to be the best judge, and in return received 
the most mortifying remarks. The great philosopher ex- 
claimed in despair, " I see my own age is not ripe enough 
to understand my work; however it shall be published!" 
When Kepler published the first rational work on comets, 
it. was condemned, even by the learned, as a wild dream. 
Copernicus so much dreaded the prejudice of mankind 
against his treatise on " The Revolutions of the Heaven- 
ly Bodies," that by a species of continence of all others 
most difficult to a philosopher, says Adam Smith, he de- 
tained it in his closet for thirty years together. Linnaeus 
once in despair abandoned his beloved studies, from a 
too irritable feeling of the ridicule in which, as it ap- 
peared to him, a professor Siegesbeck had involved his 
famous system. Penury, neglect, and labour Linnaeus 
could endure, but that his botany should become the ob- 
. ject of ridicule for all Stockholm, shook the nerves of 
this great inventor in his science. Let him speak for 
himself. " No one cared how many sleepless nights and 
toilsome hours I had passed, while all with one voice de- 
clared, that Siegesbeck had annihilated me. I took my 



106 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

leave of Flora, who bestows on me nothing but Sieges- 
becks ; and condemned my too numerous observations a 
thousand times over to eternal oblivion. What a fool 
have I been to waste so much time, to spend my days in 
a study which yields no better fruit, and makes me the 
laughing-stock of the world." Such are the cries of the 
irritability of genius, and such are often the causes. The 
world was in danger of losing a new science, had not 
Linnaeus returned to the discoveries which he had forsa- 
ken in the madness of the mind! The great Sydenham, 
who, like our Harvey and our Hunter, effected a revolu- 
tion in the science of medicine, and led on alone by the 
independence of his genius, attacked the most prevailing 
prejudices, so highly provoked the malignant emulation 
of his rivals, that a conspiracy was raised against the 
father of our modern practice to banish him out of the 
college, as " guilty of medical heresy." John Hunter was 
a great discoverer in his own science; but one who well 
knew him has told us, that few of his contemporaries 
perceived the ultimate object of his pursuits; and his 
strong and solitary genius laboured to perfect his designs 
without the solace of sympathy, without one cheering ap- 
probation. "We bees do not provide honey for our- 
selves," exclaimed Van Helmont, when worn out by the 
toils of chemistry, and still contemplating, amidst tribu- 
lation and persecution, and approaching death, his " Tree 
of Life," which he imagined he had discovered in the ce- 
dar. But with a sublime melancholy his spirit breaks 
out : " My mind breathes some unheard-of thing within ; 
though I, as unprofitable for this life, shall be buried !" 
Such were the mighty but indistinct anticipations of this 
visionary inventor, the father of modern chemistry ! 

I cannot quit this short record of the fates of the in- 
ventors in science, without adverting to another cause of 
that irritability of genius which is so closely connected 
with their pursuits. If we look into the history of theo- 



MISGIVINGS OF INVENTORS. 107 

ries, we shall be surprised at the vast number which have 
" not left a rack behind." And do we suppose that the 
inventors themselves were not at times alarmed by se- 
cret doubts of their soundness and stability ? They felt, 
too often for their repose, that the noble architecture 
which they had raised might be built on moveable sands, 
and be found only in the dust of libraries ; a cloudy day, 
or a fit of indigestion, would deprive an inventor of his 
theory all at once ; and as one of them said, " after din- 
ner, all that I have written in the morning appears to me 
dark, incongruous, nonsensical." At such moments we 
should find this man of genius in no pleasant mood. The 
true cause of this nervous state cannot, nay, must not, 
be confided to the world: the honour of his darling 
theory will always be dearer to his pride than the con- 
fession of even slight doubts which may shake its truth. 
It is a curious fact which we have but recently dis- 
covered, that Rousseau was disturbed by a terror he ex- 
perienced, and which we well know was not unfounded, 
that his theories of education were false and absurd. He 
could not endure to read a page in his own " Emile"* 
without disgust after the work had been published ! He 
acknowledged that there were more suffrages against his 
notions than for them. " I am not displeased," says he, 
"with myself on the style and eloquence, but I still 
dread that my writings are good for nothing at the 
bottom, and that all my theories are full of extrava- 
gance." \Je Grains toujours que je peche par le fond, et 
que tous mes systemes ne sont que des extravagances.] 
Hartley with his " Vibrations and Vibratiuncles," Lieb- 
nitz with his " Monads," Cudworth with his " Plastic Na- 
tures," Malebranche with his paradoxical doctrine of 
" Seeing all things in God," and Burnet with his hereti- 
cal " Theory of the Earth," must unquestionably at times 

*In a letter by Hume to Blair, written in 1766, apparently first pub- 
lished in the Literary Gazette, Nov. 1?, 1821. 



108 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

have betrayed an irritability which those about them may 
have attributed to temper, rather than to genius. 

Is our man of genius — not the victim of fancy, but the 
slave of truth — a learned author? Of the living waters 
of human knowledge it cannot be said that " If a man 
drink thereof, he shall never thirst again." What 
volumes remain to open ! what manuscript but makes 
his heart palpitate ! There is no term in researches which 
new facts may not alter, and a single date may not 
dissolve. Truth! thou fascinating, but severe mistress, 
thy adorers are often broken down in thy servitude, 
performing a thousand unregarded task-works ! Now 
winding thee through thy labyrinth with a single thread, 
often unravelling — now feeling their way in darkness, 
doubtful if it be thyself they are touching. How much 
of the real labour of genius and erudition must remain 
concealed from the world, and never be reached by 
their penetration ! Montesquieu has described this feel- 
ing after its agony : " I thought I should have killed 
myself these three months to finish a morceau (for his 
great work), which I wished to insert, on the origin and 
revolutions of the civil laws in France. You will read 
it in three hours ; but I do assure you that it cost me so 
much labour that it has whitened my hair." Mr. Hallam, 
stopping to admire the genius of Gibbon, exclaims, " In 
this, as in many other places, the masterly boldness and 
precision of his outline, which astonish those who have 
trodden parts of the same field, is apt to escape an 
uninformed reader." Thrice has my learned friend, 
Sharon Turner, recomposed, with renewed researches, 
the history of our ancestors, of which Milton and Hume 
had despaired — thrice, amidst the self-contests of ill-health 
and professional duties ! 

The man of erudition in closing his elaborate work is 
still exposed to the fatal omissions of wearied vigilance, 
or the accidental knowledge of some inferior mind, and 



SENSITIVENESS TO CRITICISM. 109 

always to the reigning taste, whatever it chance to be, of 
the public. Burnet criticised Varillas unsparingly;* 
but when he wrote history himself, Harmer's " Specimen 
of Errors in Burnet's History," returned Burnet the 
pangs which he had inflicted on another. Newton's 
favourite work was his "Chronology," which he had 
written over fifteen times, yet he desisted from its 
publication during his life-time, from the ill-usage of 
which he complained. Even the " Optics" of Newton 
had no character at home till noticed in France. The 
calm temper of our great philosopher was of so fearful a 
nature in regard to criticism, that Whiston declares that 
he would not publish his attack on the " Chronology," lest 
it might have killed our philosopher ; and thus Bishop 
Stillingneet's end was hastened by Locke's confutation 
of his metaphysics. The feelings of Sir John Marsham 
could hardly be less irritable when he found his great 
work tainted by an accusation that it was not friendly to 
revelation, f When the learned Pocock published a 
specimen of his translation of Abulpharagias, an 
Arabian historian, in 1649, it excited great interest; but 
in 1663, when he gave the world the complete version, it 
met with no encouragement: in the course of those 
thirteen years, the genius of the times had changed, and 
Oriental studies were no longer in request. 

The great Yerulam profoundly felt the retardment of 
his fame ; for he has pathetically expressed this sentiment 
in his testament, where he bequeaths his name to pos- 
terity, AFTER SOME GENERATIONS SHALL BE past. Bl'UCe 



. * For an account of this work, and Burnet's expose of it, see " Curi- 
osities of Literature," vol. i. p. 132. — Ed. 

f This great work the Canon Chronicus, was published in 16*72, and 
was the first attempt to make the Egyptian chronology clear and 
intelligible, and to reconcile the whole to the Scripture chronology ; a 
labour he had commenced in Diatriba Chronologic^ published in 
1649.— Ed. 



110 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

sunk into his grave defrauded of that just fame which 
his pride and vivacity perhaps too keenly prized, at least 
for his happiness, and which he authoritatively exacted 
from an unwilling public. Mortified and indignant at 
the reception of his great labour by the cold-hearted 
scepticism of little minds, and the maliciousness of idling 
wits, he, whose fortitude had toiled through a life of 
difficulty and danger, could not endure the laugh and 
scorn of public opinion ; for Bruce there was a simoon 
more dreadful than the Arabian, and from which genius 
cannot hide its head. Yet Bruce only met with the fate 
which Marco Polo had before encountered; whose 
faithful narrative had been contemned by his contem- 
poraries, and who was long thrown aside among le- 
gendary writers.* 

Harvey, though his life was prolonged to his eightieth 
year, hardly lived to see his great discovery of the circu- 
lation of the blood established : no physician adopted it ; 
and when at length it was received, one party attempted to 
rob Harvey of the honour of the discovery, while another 
asserted that it was so obvious, that they could only ex- 
press their astonishment that it had ever escaped obser- 
vation. Incredulity and envy are the evil spirits which 
have often dogged great inventors to their tomb, and 
there only have vanished. — But I seem writing the " ca- 

* His stories of the wealth and population of China, which he 
described as consisting of millions, obtained for him the nickname of 
Marco Milione among the Venetians and other small Italian states, who 
were unable to comprehend the greatness of his truthful narratives of 
Eastern travel. Upon his death-bed he was adjured by his friends to 
retract his statements, which he indignantly refused. It was long 
after ere his truthfulness was established by other travellers ; the 
Venetian populace gave his house the name La Corte di Milioni : and 
a vulgar caricature of the great traveller was always introduced in 
their carnivals, who was termed Marco Milione; and delighted them 
with the most absurd stories, in which everything was computed by 
millions. — Ed. 



REPUTATION DIFFICULT OF ACQUIRT. HI 

lamities of authors," and have only begun the cata- 
logue. 

The reputation of a writer of taste is subject to more 
difficulties than any other. Similar was the fate of the 
finest ode-writers in our poetry. On their publication, 
the odes of Collins could find no readers ; and those of 
Gray, though ushered into the reading world by the 
fashionable press of Walpole, were condemned as failures. 
When Racine produced his " Athalie," it was not at all 
relished: Boileau indeed declared that he understood 
these matters better than the public, and prophesied that 
the public would return to it : they did so ; but it was 
sixty years afterwards ; and Racine died without sus- 
pecting that "Athalie" was his masterpiece. I have 
heard one of our great poets regret that he had devoted 
so much of his life to the cultivation of his art, which 
arose from a project made in the golden vision of his 
youth : " at a time," said he, " when I thought that the 
fountain could never be dried up." — " Your baggage will 
reach posterity," was observed. — " There is much to 
spare," was the answer. 

Every day we may observe, of a work of genius, that 
those parts which have all the raciness of the soil, and 
as such are most liked by its admirers, are those which 
are the most criticised. Modest critics shelter them- 
selves under that, general amnesty too freely granted, 
that tastes are allowed to differ; but we should approxi- 
mate much nearer to the truth, if we were to say, that 
but few of mankind are prepared to relish the beautiful 
with that enlarged taste which comprehends all the forms 
of feeling which genius may assume ; forms which may 
be necessarily associated with defects. A man of genius 
composes in a state of intellectual emotion, and the magic 
of his style consists in the movements of his soul ; but 
the art of conveying those movements is far separated 
from the feeling which inspires them. The idea in the 



112 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

mind is not always found under the pen, any more than 
the artist's conception can always breathe in his pencil. 
Like Fiamingo's image, which he kept polishing till his 
friend exclaimed, " What perfection would you have ?" — 
" Alas !" exclaimed the sculptor, " the original I am la- 
bouring to come up to is in my head, but not yet in my 
hand." 

The writer toils, and repeatedly toils, to throw into 
our minds that sympathy with which we hang over the 
illusion of his pages, and become himself. Ariosto wrote 
sixteen different ways the celebrated stanza descriptive 
of a tempest, as appears by his MSS. at Ferrara ; and the 
version he preferred was the last of the sixteen. We 
know that Petrarch made forty-four alterations of a single 
verse : " whether for the thought, the expression, or the 
harmony, it is evident that as many operations in the 
heart, the head, or the ear of the poet occurred," observes 
a man of genius, Ugo Foscolo. Quintilian and Horace 
dread the over-fondness of an author for his compositions : 
alteration is not always improvement. A picture over- 
finished fails in its effect. If the hand of the artist can- 
not leave it, how much beauty may it undo ! yet still he 
is lingering, still strengthening the weak, still subduing 
the daring, still searching for that single idea which 
awakens so many in the minds of others, while often, as 
it once happened, the dash of despair hangs the foam on 
the horse's nostrils. I have known a great sculptor, who 
for twenty years delighted himself with forming in his 
mind the nymph his hand was always creating. How 
rapturously he beheld her ! what inspiration ! what illu- 
sion ! Alas ! the last five years spoiled the beautiful 
which he had once reached, and could not stop and 
finish ! 

The art of composition, indeed, is of such slow attain- 
ment, that a man of genius, late in life, may discover how 
its secret conceals itself in the habit ; how discipline con- 



SLOWNESS OF GREAT WORKS. 113 

sists in exercise, how perfection comes from experience, 
and how nnity is the last effort of judgment. When Fox 
meditated on a history which should last with the lan- 
guage, he met his evil genius in this new province. The 
rapidity and the fire of his elocution were extinguished 
by a pen unconsecrated by long and previous study ; he 
saw that he could not class with the great historians of 
every great people ; he complained, while he mourned 
over the fragment of genius which, after such zealous 
preparation, he dared not complete. Curran, an orator 
of vehement eloquence, often strikingly original, when 
late in life he was desirous of cultivating literary compo- 
sition, unaccustomed to its more gradual march, found a 
pen cold, and destitute of every grace. Rousseau has 
glowingly described the ceaseless inquietude by which 
he obtained the seductive eloquence of his style ; and has 
said, that with whatever talent a man may be born, the 
art of writing is not easily obtained. The existing man- 
uscripts of Rousseau display as many erasures as those 
of Ariosto or Petrarch ; they show his eagerness to dash 
down his first thoughts, and the art by which he raised 
them to the impassioned style of his imagination. The 
memoir of Gibbon was composed seven or nine times, 
and, after all, was left unfinished ; and Buffon tells us 
that he wrote his " Epoques de la Nature " eighteen times 
before it satisfied his taste. Burns's anxiety in finishing 
his poems was great ; " All my poetry," said he, " is the 
effect of easy composition, but of laborious correction." 

Pope, when employed on the Iliad, found it not only 
occupy his thoughts by day, but haunting his dreams 
by night, and once wished himself hanged, to get rid of 
Homer : and that he experienced often such literary ago- 
nies, witness his description of the depressions and eleva- 
tions of genius : 

Who pants for glory, finds but short repose ; 
A breath revives him, or a breath o'erthrows I 
8 



H4 S LITERARY CHARACTER. 

When Romney undertook to commence the first sub- 
ject for the Shakspeare Gallery, in the rapture of enthu- 
siasm, amidst the sublime and pathetic labouring in his 
whole mind, arose the terror of failure. The subject 
chosen was " The Tempest ;" and, as Ilayley truly ob- 
serves, it created many a tempest in the fluctuating 
spirits of Romney. The vehement desire of that perfec- 
tion which genius conceives, and cannot always execute, 
held a perpetual contest with that dejection of spirits 
which degrades the unhappy sufferer, and casts him, 
grovelling among the mean of his class. In a national 
work, a man of genius pledges his honour to the world for 
its performance; but to redeem that pledge, there is a 
darkness in the uncertain issue, and he is risking his hon- 
our for ever. By that work lie will always be judged, 
for public failures are never forgotten, and it is not then 
a party, but the public itself, who become his adversaries. 
With Romney it was " " a fever of the mad ;" and his 
friends could scarcely inspire him with sufficient courage 
to proceed with his arduous picture, which exercised his 
imagination and his pencil for several years. I have 
heard that he built a painting-room purposely for this 
picture ; and never did an anchorite pour forth a more 
fervent orison to Heaven, than Romney when this labour 
was complete. He had a fine genius, with all its solitary 
feelings, but he was uneducated, and incompetent even to 
write a letter ; yet on this occasion, relieved from his 
intense anxiety under so long a work, he wrote one of the 
most eloquent. It is a document in the history of genius, 
and reveals all those feelings which are here too faintly 
described.* I once heard an amiable author, whose lite- 
rary career has perhaps not answered the fond hopes of 

* " My Dear Friend, — Tour kindness in rejoicing so heartily at the 
birth of my picture has given me great satisfaction. 

11 There has been an anxiety labouring in my mind the greater part 
of the last twelvemonth. At times it had nearly overwhelmed me. I 



ANXIETY OF AUTHORS. H5 

his youth, half in anger and in love, declare that he 
would retire to some solitude, where, if any one would 
follow him, he would found a new order — the order of 

THE DISAPPOINTED. 

Thus the days of a man of genius are passed in labours 
as unremitting and exhausting as those of the artisan. 
The world is not always aware, that to some, meditation, 
composition, and even conversation, may inflict pains 
undetected by the eye and the tenderness of friendship. 
Whenever Rousseau passed a morning in society, it was 
observed, that in the evening he was dissatisfied and dis- 
tressed ; and John Hunter, in a mixed company, found 
that conversation fatigued, instead of amusing him. 
Hawkesworth, in the second paper of the " Adventurer," 
has drawn, from his own feelings, an eloquent compara- 
tive estimate of intellectual with corporeal labour ; it 
may console the humble mechanic ; and Plato, in his 
work on "Laws," seems to have been aware of this 
analogy, for he consecrates all working men or artisans 
to Vulcan and Minerva, because both those deities alike are 
hard labourers. Yet with genius all does not terminate, 
even with the most skilful labour. What the toiling 
Yulcan and the thoughtful Minerva may want, will too 
often be absent — the presence of the Graces. In the alle- 
gorical picture of the School of Design, by Carlo Maratti, 
where the students are led through their various studies, 
in the opening clouds above the academy are seen the 
Graces, hovering over their pupils, with an inscription 
they must often recollect — Senza di noi ogni fatica 
& vana. 

The anxious uncertainty of an author for his composi- 
tions resembles the anxiety of a lover when he has written 

thought I should absolutely have sunk into despair. ! what a kind 
friend is in those times ! I thank God, whatever my picture may be, 
I can say thus much, I am a greater philosopher and a better Chris- 
tian." 



116 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

to a mistress who has not yet decided on his claims; 
he repents his labour, for he thinks he has written too 
much, while he is mortified at recollecting that he had 
omitted some things which he imagines would have 
secured the object of his wishes. Madame De Stael, who 
has often entered into feelings familiar to a literary and 
political family, in a parallel between ambition and 
genius, has distinguished them in this ; that while " am- 
bition perseveres in the desire of acquiring power, genius 
flags of itself. Genius in the midst of society is a pain, 
an internal fever which would require to be treated as a 
real disease, if the records of glory did not soften the 
sufferings it produces." — " Athenians ! what troubles 
have you not cost me," exclaimed Demosthenes, " that I 
may be talked of by you !" 

These moments of anxiety often darken the brightest 
hours of genius. Racine had extreme sensibility; the 
pain inflicted by a severe criticism outweighed all the 
applause he received. He seems to have felt, what he 
was often reproached with, that his Greeks, his Jews, 
and his Turks, were all inmates of Versailles. He had 
two critics, who, like our Dennis with Pope and Addison, 
regularly dogged his pieces as they appeared.* Cor- 
neille's objections he would attribute to jealousy — at his 
pieces when burlesqued at the Italian theatref he would 
smile outwardly, though sick at heart ; but his son in- 
forms us, that a stroke of raillery from his witty friend 
Chapelle, whose pleasantry hardly sheathed its bitterness, 
sunk more deeply into his heart than the burlesques at 
the Italian theatre, the protest of Corneille, and the 
iteration of the two Dennises. More than once Moliere 

* See the article " On the Influence of a bad temper in Criticism " in 
" Calamities of Authors," for a notice of Denni3 and his career. — Ed. 

\ See the article on "The Sensibility of Racine" in "Literary Mis- 
cellanies " (in the present volume), and that on "Parody," in " Curiosi- 
ties of Literature," vol. ii., p. 459. — Ed. 



ANXIETY OF AUTHORS.. H7 

and Racine, in vexation of spirit, resolved to abandon 
their dramatic career ; it was Boileau who ceaselessly- 
animated their languor: "Posterity," he cried, "will 
avenge the injustice of our age !" And Congreve's 
comedies met with such moderate success, that it appears 
the author was extremely mortified, and on the ill recep- 
tion of The Way of the World, determined to write no 
more for the stage. When he told Voltaire, on the 
French wit's visit, that Voltaire must consider him as a 
private gentleman, and not as an author,— which apparent 
affectation called down on Congreve the sarcastic sever- 
ity of the French author,* — more of mortification and hu- 
mility might have been in Congreve's language than of 
affectation or pride. 

The life of Tasso abounds with pictures of a complete 
exhaustion of this kind. His contradictory critics had 
perplexed him with the most intricate literary discus- 
sions, and either occasioned or increased a mental aliena- 
tion. In one of his letters, we find that he repents the 
composition of his great poem, for although his own 
taste approved- of that marvellous, which still forms a 
noble part of its creation, yet he confesses that his cold 
reasoning critics have decided that the history of his 
hero, Godfrey, required another species of conduct. 
" Hence," cries the unhappy bard, " doubts torment me ; 
but for the past, and what is done, I know of no remedy;" 
and he longs to precipitate the publication, that " he may 
be delivered from misery and agony." He solemnly 
swears — "Did not the circumstances of my situation 
compel me, I would not print it, even perhaps during 
my life, I so much doubt of its success." Such was the 
painful state of fear and doubt experienced by the author 
of the "Jerusalem Delivered," when he gave it to the 
world ; a state of suspense, among the children of im- 

* Voltaire quietly said lie should not have troubled himself to visit 
him if he had been merely a private gentleman. — Ed. 



118 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

agination, in which none are more liable to participate 
than the true sensitive artist. We may now inspect the 
severe correction of Tasso's muse, in the fac-simile of a 
page of his manuscripts in Mr. Dibdin's late "Tour." 
She seems to have inflicted tortures on his pen, SttDAM- 
ing even those which may be seen in the fac-simile page 
which, thirty years ago, I gave of Pope's Homer.* At 
Florence may still be viewed the many works begun and 
abandoned by the genius of Michael Angelo ; they are 
preserved inviolate — " so sacred is the terror of Michael 
Angelo's genius !" exclaims Forsyth. These works are 
not always to be considered as failures of the chisel; 
they appear rather to have been rejected for coming 
short of the artist's first conceptions : yet, in a strain of 
sublime poetry, he has preserved his sentiments on the 
force of intellectual labour; he thought that there was 
nothing which the imagination conceived, that could not 
be made visible in marble, if the hand were made to 
obey the mind : — 

Non ha l'ottimo artista alcun concetto, 
Ch' un marmo solo in se non circoscriva 
Col suo soverchio, e solo a quello arriva 

La man eke obbedisce all' intelletto. 



The sculptor never yet conceived a thought 
That yielding marble has refused to aid ; 

But never with a mastery he wrought — 
Save when the hand the intellect obeyed. 

An interesting domestic story has been preserved of 
Gesner, who so zealously devoted his graver and his 
pencil to the arts. His sensibility was ever struggling 
after that ideal excellence which he could not attain. 
Often he sunk into fits of melancholy, and, gentle as he 

* It now forms the frontispiece to vol. ii. of the last edition of the 
"Curiosities of Literature." — Ed. 



INTELLECTUAL LABOUR. 119 

was, the tenderness of his wife and friends could not 
soothe his distempered feelings; it was necessary to 
abandon him to his own thoughts, till, after a long 
abstinence from his neglected works, in a lucid moment, 
some accident occasioned him to return to them. In one 
of these hypochondria of genius, after a long interval 
of despair, one morning at breakfast with his wife, his 
eye fixed on one of his pictures : it was a group of fauns 
with young shepherds dancing at the entrance of a 
cavern shaded with vines ; his eye appeared at length to 
glisten ; and a sudden return to good humour broke out 
in this lively apostrophe — " Ah ! see those playful chil- 
dren, they always dance !" This was the moment of 
gaiety and inspiration, and he flew to his forsaken easel. 
La Harpe, an author by profession, observes, that as it 
has been shown that there are some maladies peculiar to 
artisans* — there are also some sorrows peculiar to them, 
and which the world can neither pity nor soften, because 
they do not enter into their experience. The querulous 
language of so many men of genius has been sometimes 
attributed to causes very different from the real ones — 
the most fortunate live to see their talents contested and 
their best works decried. Assuredly many an author has 
sunk into his grave without the consciousness of having 
obtained that fame for which he had sacrificed an arduous 
life. The too feeling Smollett has left this testimony to 
posterity : — " Had some of those, who are pleased to call 
themselves my friends, been at any pains to deserve the 
character, and told me ingenuously what I had to expect 
in the capacity of an author, I should, in all probability, 
have spared myself the incredible labour and chagrin I 

* See Ramazini, " De Morbis Artificium Diatriba," which Dr. James 
translated in 1750. It is a sad reflection, resulting from this curious 
treatise, that the arts entail no small mischief upon their respective 
workmen ; so that the means by which they live are too often the 
occasion of their being hurried out of the world. 



120 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

have since undergone." And Smollett was a popular 
writer ! Pope's solemn declaration in the preface to his 
collected works comes by no means short of Smollett's 
avowal. Hume's philosophical indifference could often 
suppress that irritability which Pope and Smollett fully 
indulged. 

But were the feelings of Hume more obtuse, or did his 
temper, gentle as it was by constitution, bear, with a 
Baintly patience, the mortifications his literary life so long 
endured? After recomposing two of his works, which 
incurred the same neglect in their altered form, lie raised 
the most sanguine hopes of his History, but he tells us, 
" miserable was my disappointment !" Although he 
never deigned to reply to his opponents, yet they 
haunted him ; and an eye-witness has thus described the 
irritated author discovering in conversation his sup- 
pressed resentment — " His forcible mode of expression, 
the brilliant quick movements of his eyes, and the ges- 
tures of his body," these betrayed the pangs of con- 
tempt, or of aversion ! Hogarth, in a fit of the spleen, 
advertised that he had determined not to give the world 
any more original works, and intended to pass the rest 
of his days in painting portraits. The same -advertise- 
ment is marked by farther irritability. He contemptu- 
ously offers the purchasers of his " Analysis of Beauty," 
to present them gratis with an "eighteenpenny pam- 
phlet," published by Ramsay the painter, written in 
opposition to Hogarth's principles. So untameable was 
the irritability of this great inventor in art, that he at- 
tempts to conceal his irritation by offering to dispose gra^ 
tuitously of the criticism which had disturbed his nights.* 

* Hogarth was not without reason for exasperation. He was se- 
verely attacked for his theories about the curved line of beauty, which 
was branded as a foolish attempt to prove crookedness elegant, and 
himself vulgarly caricatured. It was even asserted that the theory 
was stolen from Lomazzo — Ed. 



IRRITABILITY OP GENIUS. 121 

Parties confederate against a man of genius, — as hap- 
pened to Corneille, to D'Avenant,* and Milton; and a 
Pradon and a Settle carry away the meed of a Racine and 
a Dryden. It was to support the drooping spirit of his 
friend Racine on the opposition raised against Phaedra, 
that Boileau addressed to him an epistle " On the Utility to 
be drawn from the Jealousy of the Envious." The calm 
dignity of the historian De Thou, amidst the passions of 
his times, confidently expected that justice from posterity 
which his own age refused to his early and his late labour. 
That great man was, however, compelled by his injured 
feelings, to compose a poem under the name of another, to 
serve as his apology against the intolerant court of Rome, 
and the factious politicians of France ; it was a noble sub- 
terfuge to which a great genius was forced. The acquaint- 
ances of the poet Collins probably complained of his 
wayward humours and irritability ; but how could they 
sympathise with the secret mortification of the poet, who 
imagined that he had composed his Pastorals on wrong 
principles, or when, in the agony of his soul, he consigned 
to the flames with his own hands his unsold, but immor- 
tal odes ? Can Ave forget the dignified complaint of the 
Rambler, with which he awfully closes his work, appeal- 
ing to posterity ? 

Genius contracts those peculiarities of which it is so 
loudly accused in its solitary occupations — that loftiness 
of spirit, those quick jealousies, those excessive afiections 
and aversions which view everything as it passes in its 
own ideal world, and rarely as it exists in the mediocrity 
of reality. If this irritability of genius be a malady which 

* See " Quarrels of Authors," p. 403, on the confederacy of several 
wits against D'Avenant, a great genius; where I discovered that a 
volume of poems, said " to be written by the author's friends." which 
had hitherto been referred to as a volume of panegyrics, contains 
nothing but irony and satire, which had escaped the discovery of so 
many transcribers of title-pages, frequently miscalled literary historians. 



122 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

has raged even among philosophers, we must not be sur- 
prised at the temperament of poets. These last have 
abandoned their country; they have changed their name; 
they have punished themselves with exile in the rage of 
their disorder. No! not poets only. Descartes sought 
in vain, even in his secreted life, for a refuge for his 
genius; he thought himself persecuted in France, lie 
thought himself calumniated among strangers, and he 
went and died in Sweden ; and little did that man of genius 
think that his countrymen would beg to have his ashes 
restored to them. Even the reasoning Hume once pro- 
posed to change his name and his country; and I believe 
did. The great poetical genius of our own times has 
openly alienated himself from the land of his brothers. 
He becomes immortal in the language of a people whom 
he would contemn.* Does he accept with ingratitude 
the fame he loves more than life ? 

Such, then, is that state of irritability in which men of 
genius participate, whether they be inventors, men of 
learning, fine writers, or artists. It is a state not friendly 
to equality of temper. In the various humours inci- 
dental to it, when they are often deeply affected, the 
cause escapes all perception of sympathy. The intellect- 

* I shall preserve a manuscript note of Lord Byron on this passage ; 
not without a hope that we shall never receive from him the genius of 
Italian poetry, otherwise than in the language of his "father land;" an 
expressive term, which I adopted from the Dutch language some years 
past, and which I have seen since sanctioned by the pens of Lord Byron 
and of Mr. Southey. 

His lordship has here observed, " It is not my fault that I am obliged 
to write in English. If I understood my present language equally well, 
I would write in it ; but this will require ten years at least to form a 
style : no tongue so easy to acquire a little of, or so difficult to master 
thoroughly, as Italian." On the same page I find the following note: 
" What was rumoured of me in that language ? If true, I was unfit 
for England: if false, England was unfit for me: — 'There is a world 
elsewhere.' I have never regretted for a moment that country, but 
often that I ever returned to it at all." 



GENIUS AND SOCIETY. 123 

ual malady eludes even the tenderness of friendship. At 
those moments, the lightest injury to the feelings, which 
at another time would make no impression, may produce 
a perturbed state of feeling in the warm temper, or the 
corroding chagrin of a self-wounded spirit. These are 
moments which claim the encouragements of a friendship 
animated by a high esteem for the intellectual excellence 
of the man of genius ; not the general intercourse of so- 
ciety ; not the insensibility of the dull, nor the levity of 
the volatile. 

Men of genius are often reverenced only where they 
are known by their writings — intellectual beings in the 
romance of life ; in its history, they are men ! Erasmus 
compared them to the great figures in tapestry-work, which 
lose their effect when not seen at a distance. Their foibles 
and their infirmities are obvious to their associates, often 
only capable of discerning these qualities. The defects 
of great men are the consolation of the dunces. 



CHAPTER VIII. 



The spirit of literature and the spirit of society. — The Inventors. — So- 
ciety offers seduction and not reward to men of genius. — The notions 
of persons of fashion of men of genius. — The habitudes of the man 
of genius distinct from those of the man of society. — Study, medita- 
tion, and enthusiasm, the progress of genius. — The disagreement 
between the men of the world and the literary character. 

THE Inventoes, who inherited little or nothing from 
their predecessors, appear to have pursued their in- 
sulated studies in the full independence of their mind and 
development of their incentive faculty; they stood apart, 
in seclusion, the solitary lights of their age. Such were the 
founders of our literature — Bacon and Hobbes, Newton 



124: LITERARY CHARACTER. 

and Milton. Even so late as the days of Dryden, Addi- 
son, and Pope, the man of genius drew his circle round 
his intimates ; his day was uniform, his habits unbroken ; 
and he was never too far removed, nor too long estranged 
from meditation and reverie : his works were the sources 
of his pleasure ere they became the labours of his pride. 

But when a more uniform light of knowledge illumin- 
ates from all sides, the genius of society, made up of so 
many sorts of genius, becomes greater than the genius of 
the individual who has entirely yielded himself up to his 
solitary art. Heuce the character of a man of genius 
becomes subordinate. A conversation age succeeds a 
studious one; and the family of genius, the poet, the 
painter, and the student, are no longer recluses. They 
mix with their rivals, who are jealous of equality, or with 
others who, incapable of valuing them for themselves 
alone, rate them but as parts of an integral. 

The man of genius is now trammelled with the arti- 
ficial and mechanical forms of life ; and in too close an 
intercourse with society, the loneliness and raciness of 
thinking is modified away in its seductive conventions. 
An excessive indulgence in the pleasures of social life con- 
stitutes the great interests of a luxuriant and opulent 
age ; but of late, while the arts of assembling in large 
societies have been practised, varied by all forms, and 
pushed on to all excesses, it may become a question 
whether by them our happiness is as much improved, or 
our individual character as well formed as in a society 
not so heterogeneous and unsocial as that crowd termed, 
with the sort of modesty peculiar to our times, " a small 
party :" the simplicity of parade, the humility of pride 
engendered by the egotism which multiplies itself in pro- 
portion to the numbers it assembles. 

It may, too, be a question whether, the literary man 
and the artist are not immolating their genius to society 
when, in the shadowiness of assumed talents — that coun- 



V 



GENIUS AND SOCIETY. 125 

terfeiting of all shapes — they lose their real form, with 
the mockery of Proteus. But nets of roses catch their 
feet, and a path, where all the senses are flattered, is now 
opened to win an Epictetus from his hut. The art of 
multiplying the enjoyments of society is discovered in the 
morning lounge, the evening dinner, and the midnight 
coterie. In frivolous fatigues, and vigils without medi- 
tation, perish the unvalued hours which, true genius 
knows, are always too brief for art, and too rare to catch 
its inspirations. Hence so many of our contemporaries, 
whose card-racks are crowded, have produced only flashy 
fragments. Efforts, but not works — they seem to be 
effects without causes ; and as a great author, who is not 
one of them, once observed to me, " They waste a barrel 
of gunpowder in squibs." 

And yet it is seduction, and not reward, which mere 
fashionable society offers the man of true genius. He will 
be sought for with enthusiasm, but he cannot escape from 
his certain fate — that of becoming tiresome to his pre- 
tended admirers. 

At first the idol — shortly he is changed into a victim. 
He forms, indeed, a figure in their little pageant, and is 
invited as a sort of improvisatore ; but the esteem they 
concede to him is only a part of the system of politeness ; 
and should he be dull in discovering the favourite quality 
of their self-love, or in participating in their volatile 
tastes, he will find frequent opportunities of observing, 
with the sage at the court of Cyprus, that "what he 
knows is not proper for this place, and what is proper for 
this place he knows not." This society takes little per- 
sonal interest in the literary character. Horace Walpole 
lets us into this secret when writing to another man of 
fashion, on such a man of genius as Gray — " I agree with 
you most absolutely in your opinion about Gray ; he is 
the worst company in the world. From a melancholy 
turn, from living reclusely, and from a little too* much 



126 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

dignity, he never converses easily ; all his words are 
measured and chosen, and formed into sentences : his 
writings are admirable— he himself is not agreeable." 
This volatile being in himself personified the quintessence 
of that society which is called "the world,' and could not 
endure that equality of intellect which genius exacts. He 
rejected Chatterton, and quarrelled with every literary 
man and every artist whom he first invited to familiarity 
— and then hated. Witness the fates of Bentley, of Muntz, 
of Gray, of Cole, and others. Such a mind was incapa- 
ble of appreciating the literary glory on which the mighty 
mind of Burke was meditating. Walpole knew Burke at 
a critical moment of his life, and he has recorded his own 
feelings : — " There was a young Mr. Burke who wrote a 
book, in the style of Lord Bolingbroke, that was much 
admired. He is a sensible man, but has not icorn off his 
authorism yet, and thinks there is nothing so charming 
as writers, and to be one : he will know better one of these 
days." Gray and Burke ! What mighty men must be 
submitted to the petrifying sneer — that indifference of 
selfism for great sympathies — of this volatile and heart- 
less man of literature and rank ! 

That thing of silk, 
Sporus, that mere white curd of ass's milk I 

The confidential confession of Racine to his son is re- 
markable : — " Do not think that I am sought after by the 
great for my dramas ; Corneille composes nobler verses 
than mine, but no one notices him, and he only pleases 
by the mouth of the actors. I never allude to my works 
when with men of the world, but I amuse them about 
matters they like to hear. My talent with them consists, 
not in making them feel that I have any, but in showing 
them that they have." Racine treated the great like 
the children of society ; Corneille would not compromise 
for the* tribute he exacted, but he consoled himself when, 



GENIUS AND SOCIETY. 127 

at his entrance into the theatre, the audience usually rose 
to salute him. The great comic genius of France, who 
indeed was a very thoughtful and serious man, addressed 
a poem to the painter Mignard, expressing his conviction 
that " the court," by which a Frenchman of the court of 
Louis XIV. meant the society we call " fashionable," is 
fatal to the perfection of art — 

Qui se donne a la cour se derobe a son art ; 

Un esprit partage rarement se consomme, 

Et les emplois de feu demandent tout l'homme. 

Has not the fate in society of our reigning literary 
favourites been uniform ? Their mayoralty hardly ex- 
ceeds the year: they are pushed aside to put in their 
place another, who, in his turn, must descend. Such is 
the history of the literary character encountering the 
perpetual difficulty of appearing what he really is not, 
while he sacrifices to a few, in a certain corner of the 
metropolis, who have long fantastically styled themselves 
" the world," that more dignified celebrity which makes 
an author's name more familiar than his person. To one 
who appeared astonished at the extensive celebrity of 
Buffbn, the modern Pliny replied, " I have passed fifty 
years at my desk." Haydn would not yield up to society 
more than those hours which were not devoted to study. 
These were indeed but few : and such were the uniformity 
and retiredness of his life, that " He was for a long time 
the only musical man in Europe who was ignorant of the 
celebrity of Joseph Haydn." And has not one, the most 
sublime of the race, sung, 

che seggendo in piuma, 
In Fama non si vien, ne sotto coltre ; 
Sanza la qual chi sua vita consuma 
Cotal vestigio in terra di se lascia 
Qual fummo in aere, ed in acqua la schiuma. 

For not on downy plumes, nor under shade 
Of canopy reposing, Fame is won 



128 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

"Without which, whosoe'er consumes his days, 
Leaveth such vestige of himself on earth 
As smoke in air, or foam upon the wave.* 

But men of genius, in their intercourse with persons of 
fashion, have a secret inducement to court that circle. 
They feel a perpetual want of having the reality of their 
talents confirmed to themselves, and they often step into 
society to observe in what degree they are objects 
of attention; for though ever accused of vanity, the 
greater part of men of genius feel that their existence, 
as such, must depend on the opinion of others. This 
standard is in truth always problematical and variable ; 
yet they cannot hope to find a more certain one among 
their rivals, who at all times are adroitly depreciating 
their brothers, and "dusking" their lustre. They dis- 
cover among those cultivators of literature and the arts 
who have recourse to them for their pleasure, impas- 
sioned admirers, rather than unmerciful judges — judges 
who have only time to acquire that degree of illumina- 
tion which is just sufficient to set at ease the fears of 
these claimants of genius. 

When literary men assemble together, what mimetic 
friendships, in their mutual corruption ! Creatures of 
intrigue, they borrow other men's eyes, and act by feel- 
ings often even contrary to their own: they wear a 
mask on their face, and only sing a tune they have 
caught. Some hierophant in their mysteries proclaims 
their elect whom they have to initiate, and their profane 
who are to stand apart under their ban. They bend to 
the spirit of the age, but they do not elevate the public 
to them; they care not for truth, but only study to 
produce effect, and they do nothing for fame but what 
obtains an instant purpose. Yet their fame is not there- 
fore the more real, for everything connected with 
fashion becomes obsolete. Her ear has a great suscepti- 

* Cary's Dante, Canto xxiv. 



GENIUS AND SOCIETY. 129 

bility of weariness, and her eye rolls for incessant 
novelty. Never was she earnest for anything. Men's 
minds with her become tarnished and old-fashioned as 
furniture. But the steams of rich dinners, the eye which 
sparkles with the wines of France, the luxurious night 
which flames with more heat and brilliancy than God 
has made the day, this is the world the man of coterie- 
celebrity has chosen ; and the Epicurean, as long as his 
senses do not cease to act, laughs at the few who retire 
to the solitary midnight lamp. Posthumous fame is — a 
nothing ! Such men live like unbelievers in a future 
state, and their narrow calculating spirit coldly dies in 
their artificial world : but true genius looks at a nobler 
source of its existence ; it catches inspiration in its insu- 
lated studies ; and to the great genius, who feels how 
his present is necessarily connected with his future 
celebrity, posthumous fame is a reality, for the sense 
acts upon him ! 

The habitudes of genius, before genius looses its fresh- 
ness in this society, are the mould in which the character 
is cast ; and these, in spite of all the disguise of the man, 
will make him a distinct being from the man of society. 
Those who have assumed the literary character often for 
purposes very distinct from literary ones, imagine that 
their circle is the public ; but in this factitious public a} 1 
their interests, their opinions, and even their passion-, 
are temporary, and the admirers with the admired pass 
away with their season. " Is it not sufficient that we 
speak the same language," says a witty philosopher, " but 
we must learn their dialect; we must think as they 
think, and we must echo their opinions, as we act by 
imitation." Let the man of genius then dread to ]evel 
himself to the mediocrity of feeling and talent required 
in such circles of society, lest he become one of them- 
selves ; he will soon find that to think like them will in 
time become to act like them. But he who in solitude 
9 



130 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

adopts no transient feelings, and reflects no artificial 
lights, who is only himself, possesses an immense advan- 
tage: he has not attached importance to what is merely 
local and fugitive, but listens to interior truths, and fixes 
on the immutable nature of things. lie is the man of 
every age. Malcbranche has observed, that " It is not 
indeed thought to be charitable to disturb common 
opinions, because it is not truth which unites society as 
it exists so much as opinion and custom :" a principle 
which the world would not, I think, disagree with ; but 
which tends to render folly wisdom itself, and to make 
error immortal. 

Ridicule is the light scourge of society, and the terror 
of genius. Ridicule surrounds him with her chimeras, 
which, like the shadowy monsters opposing iEncas, are 
impalpable to his strokes : but remember when the sibyl 
bade the hero proceed without noticing them, he found 
these airy nothings as harmless as they were unreal. 
The habits of the literary character will, however, be 
tried by the men and women of the world by their own 
standard : they have no other ; the salt of ridicule gives 
a poignancy to their deficient comprehension, and their 
perfect ignorance, of the persons or things which are the 
subjects of their ingenious animadversions. The habits 
of the literary character seem inevitably repulsive to 
persons of the world. Voltaire, and his companion, the 
scientific Madame De Chatelet, she who introduced 
Newton to the French nation, lived entirely devoted to 
literary pursuits, and their habits were strictly literary. 
It happened once that this learned pair dropped unex- 
pectedly into a fashionable circle in the chateau of a 
French nobleman. A Madame de Stael, the persifleur in 
office of Madame Du Deffand, has copiously narrated 
the whole affair. They arrived at midnight like two 
famished spectres, and there was some trouble to put 
them to supper and bed. They are called apparitions, 



VOLTAIRE AtfD DE CHATELET. 131 

because they were never visible by day, only at ten at 
night ; for the one is busied in describing great deeds, 
and the other in commenting on Newton. Like other 
apparitions, they are uneasy companions: they will 
neither play nor walk; they will not dissipate their 
mornings with the charming circle about them, nor 
allow the charming circle to break into their studies. 
Voltaire and Madame de Chatelet would have suffered 
the same pain in being forced to an abstinence of their 
regular studies, as this circle of " agreables " would have 
at the loss of their meals and their airings. However, 
the persifleur declares they were ciphers "en societe," 
adding no value to the number, and to which their 
learned writings bear no reference. 

But if this literary couple would not play, what was 
worse, Voltaire poured out a vehement declamation 
against a fashionable species of gambling, which appears 
to have made them all stare. But Madame de Chatelet 
is the more frequent victim of our persifleur. The learned 
lady would change her apartment — for it was too noisy, 
and it had smoke without fire — which last was her em- 
blem. " She is reviewing her JPrincipia / an exercise 
she repeats every year, without which precaution they 
might escape from her, and get so far away that she 
might never find them again. I believe that her head in 
respect to them is a house of imprisonment rather than 
the place of their birth ; so that she is right to watch 
them closely ; and she prefers the fresh air of this occu- 
pation to our amusements, and persists in her invisibility 
till night-time. She has six or seven tables in her apart- 
ments, for she wants them of all sizes ; immense ones to 
spread out her papers, solid ones to hold her instruments, 
lighter ones, &c. Yet with all this she could not escape 
from the accident which happened to Philip II., after 
passing the night in writing, when a bottle of ink fell 
over the despatches ; but the lady did not imitate the 



133 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

moderation of the prince; indeed, she had not written on 
State affairs, and what was spoilt in her room was algebra, 
much more difficult to copy out." Here is a pair of por- 
traits of a great poet and a great mathematician, whose 
habits were discordant with the fashionable circle in 
which they resided — the representation is just, for it is 
by one of the coterie itself. 

Study, meditation, and enthusiasm, — this is the progress 
of genius, and these cannot be the habits of him who lin- 
gers till he can only live among polished crowds ; who, 
if he bear about him the consciousness of genius, will still 
be acting under their influences. And perhaps there 
never was one of this class of men who had not either 
first entirely formed himself in solitude, or who amidst 
society will not be often breaking out to seek for himself. 
Wilkes, no longer touched by the fervours of literary 
and patriotic glory, suffered life to melt away as a do- 
mestic voluptuary; and then it was that he observed 
with some surprise of the great Earl of Chatham, that he 
sacrificed every pleasure of social life, even in youth, to 
his great pursuit of eloquence. That ardent character 
studied Barrow's Sermons so often as to repeat them 
from memory, and could even read twice from beginning 
to end Bailey's Dictionary ; these are little facts which 
belong only to great minds ! The earl himself acknowl- 
edged an artifice he practised in his intercourse with 
society, for he said, " when he was young, he always 
came late into company, and left it early." Vittorio Al- 
fieri, and a brother-spirit, our own noble poet, were rarely 
seen amidst the brilliant circle in which they were born. 
The workings of their imagination were perpetually 
emancipating them, and one deep loneliness of feeling 
proudly insulated them among the unimpassioned triflers 
of their rank. They preserved unbroken the unity of 
their character, in constantly escaping from the proces- 



A LITERARY MONARCH. 133 

sional spectacle of society.* It is no trivial observation 
of another noble writer, Lord Shaftesbury, that " it may 
happen that a person may be so much the worse author, 
for being the finer gentleman." 

An extraordinary instance of this disagreement be- 
tween the man of the world and the literary character, 
we find in a philosopher seated on a throne. The cele- 
brated Julian stained the imperial purple with an author's 
ink ; and when he resided among the Antiochians, his 
unalterable character shocked that volatile and luxurious 
race. He slighted the plaudits of their theatre, he ab- 
horred their dances and their horse-races, he was absti- 
nent even at a festival, and incorrupt himself, perpetually 
admonished the dissipated citizens of their impious 
abandonment of the laws of their country. The Antio- 
chians libelled their emperor, and petulantly lampooned 
his beard, which the philosopher carelessly wore neither 
perfumed nor curled. Julian, scorning to inflict a sharper 
punishment, pointed at them his satire of " the Misopo- 
gon, or the Antiochian ; the Enemy of the Beard," where, 
amidst irony and invective, the literary monarch bestows 
on himself many exquisite and characteristic touches. 
All that the persons of fashion alleged against the literary 
character, Julian unreservedly confesses — his undressed 
beard and awkwardness, his obstinacy, his unsociable 
habits, his deficient tastes, while at the same time he 
represents his good qualities as so many extravagances. 
But, in this Cervantic pleasantry of self-reprehension, the 
imperial philosopher has not failed to show this light 
and corrupt people that the reason he could not possibly 

* In a note which Lord Byron has written in a copy of this work 
his lordship says, " I fear this was not the case ; I have been but too 
much in that circle, especially in 1812-13-14." 

To the expression of " one deep loneliness of feeling," his lordship 
has marked in the margin "True." I am gratified to confirm the 
theory of my ideas of the man of genius, by the practical experience 
of the greatest of our age. 



134 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

resemble them, existed in the unhappy circumstance of 
having been subject to too strict an education under a 
family tutor, who had never suffered him to swerve from 
the one right way, and who (additional misfortune !) had 
inspired him with such a silly reverence for Plato and 
Socrates, Aristotle and Theophrastus, that he had been 
induced to make them his models. " Whatever manners," 
says the emperor, "I may have previously contracted, 
whether gentle or boorish, it is impossible for me now to 
alter or unlearn. Habit is said to be a second nature ; 
to oppose it is irksome, but to counteract the study of 
more than thirty years is extremely difficult, especially 
when it has been imbibed with so much attention." 

And what if men of genius, relinquishing their habits, 
could do this violence to their nature, should we not 
lose the original for a factitious genius, and spoil one 
race without improving the other ? If nature and habit, 
that second nature which prevails even over the first, 
have created two beings distinctly different, what mode 
of existence shall ever assimilate them ? Antipathies 
and sympathies, those still occult causes, however con- 
cealed, will break forth at an unguarded moment. Clip 
the wings of an eagle that he may roost among domestic 
fowls, — at some unforeseen moment his pinions will over- 
shadow and terrify his tiny associates, for " the feathered 
kin^ " will be still musing on the rock and the cloud. 

The man of genius will be restive even in his tram- 
melled paces. Too impatient amidst the heartless cour- 
tesies of society, and little practised in the minuter 
attentions, he has rarely sacrificed to the unlaughing 
graces of Lord Chesterfield. Plato ingeniously compares 
Socrates to the gallipots of the Athenian apothecaries; 
the grotesque figures of owls and apes were painted on 
their exterior, but they contained within precious balsams. 
The man of genius amidst many a circle may exclaim 
with Themistocles, " I cannot fiddle, but I can make a 



A LITERARY MONARCH. 135 

l 

little Tillage a great city;" and with Corneille, he may 
be allowed to smile at his own deficiencies, and even 
disdain to please in certain conventional manners, assert- 
ing that " wanting all these things, he was not the less 
Corneille." 

But with the great thinkers and students, their char- 
acter is still more obdurate. Adam Smith could never 
free himself from the embarrassed manners of a recluse ; 
he was often absent, and his grave and formal conver- 
sation made him seem distant and reserved, when in fact 
no man had warmer feelings for his intimates. One who 
knew Sir Isaac Newton tells us, that " he would some- 
times be silent and thoughtful, and look all the while 
as if he were saying his prayers." A French princess, 
desirous of seeing the great moralist Xicolle, experienced 
an inconceivable disappointment when the moral in- 
structor, entering with the most perplexing bow imagin- 
able, silently sank into his chair. The interview pro- 
moted no conversation, and the retired student, whose 
elevated spirit might have endured martyrdom, shrunk 
with timidity in the unaccustomed honour of conversing 
with a princess and having nothing to say. Observe 
Hume thrown into a most ridiculous attitude by a woman 
of talents and coterie celebrity. Our philosopher was 
called on to perform his part in one of those inventions 
of the hour to which the fashionable, like children in 
society, have sometimes resorted to attract their world 
by the rumour of some new extravagance. In the pres- 
ent, poor Hume was to represent a sultan on a sofa, 
sitting between two slaves, who were the prettiest and 
most vivacious of Parisians. Much was anticipated from 
this literary exhibition. The two slaves were ready at 
repartee, but the utter simplicity of the sultan displayed 
a blockishness which blunted all edge. The phlegmatic 
metaphysician and historian only gave a sign of life by 
repeating the same awkward gesture, and the same ridi- 



13G LITERARY CHARACTER. 

culous exclamation, without end. One of the fair slaves 
soon discovered the unchangeable nature of the forlorn 
philosopher, impatiently exclaiming, "I guessed as much, 
never was there such a calf of a man!" — "Since this 
affair," adds Madame d'Epinay, "Hume is at present 
banished to the class of spectators." The philosopher, 
indeed, had formed a more correct conception of his 
own character than the volatile sylphs of the Parisian 
circle, for in writing to the Countess de Boufflers, on an 
invitation to Paris, he said, "I have rusted on amid 
books and study ; have been little engaged in the active, 
and not much in the pleasurable, scenes of life; and am 
more accustomed to a select society than to general 
companies." If Hume made a ridiculous figure in these 
circles, the error did not lie on the side of that cheerful 
and profound philosopher. — This subject leads our inqui- 
ries to the nature of the conversations of men of 
genius. 



CHAPTER IX. 



Conversations of men of genius. — Their deficient agreeableness may 
result from qualities which conduce to their greatness. — Slow-minded 
men not the dullest. — The conversationists not the ablest writers. — 
Their true excellenco in conversation consists of associations with 

their pursuits. 

IX conversation the sublime Dante was taciturn or 
satirical ; Butler sullen or caustic ; Gray and Alfieri 
seldom talked or smiled ; Descartes, whose habits had 
formed him for solitude and meditation, was silent ; Rous- 
seau was remarkably trite in conversation, not an idea, not 
a word of fancy or eloquence warmed him ; Addison and 
Moliere in society were only observers ; and Dry den has 
very honestly told us, " My conversation is slow and dull, 



CONVERSATIONAL POWER. 137 

my humour saturnine and reserved ; in short, I am none 
of those who endeavour to break jests in company, or 
make repartees." Pope had lived among "the great," 
not only in rank but in intellect, the most delightful con- 
versationists ; but the poet felt that he could not contri- 
bute to these seductive pleasures, and at last confessed 
that he could amuse and instruct himself much more by 
another means : " As much company as I have kept, and 
as much as I love it, I love reading better, and would 
rather be employed in reading, than in the most agree- 
able conversation." Pope's conversation, as preserved 
by Spence, was sensible ; and it would seem that he had 
never said but one witty thing in his whole life, for only 
one has been recorded. It was ingeniously said of 
Vaucanson, that he was as much an automaton as any 
which he made. Hogarth and Swift, who looked on the 
circles of society with eyes of inspiration, were absent in 
company ; but their grossness and asperity did not pre- 
vent the one from being the greatest of comic painters, 
nor the other as much a creator of manners in his way. 
Genius, even in society, is pursuing its own operations, 
and it would cease to be itself were it always to act like 
others. 

Men of genius who are habitually eloquent, who have 
practised conversation as an art, for some even sacrifice 
their higher pursuits to this perishable art of acting, have 
indeed excelled, and in the most opposite manner. Home 
Tooke finely discriminates the wit in conversation of 
Sheridan and Curran, after having passed an evening in 
their company. " Sheridan's wit was like steel highly 
polished and sharpened for display and use ; Curran's 
was a mine of virgin gold, incessantly crumbling away 
from its own richness." Charles Butler, whose reminis- 
cences of his illustrious contemporaries are derived from 
personal intercourse, has correctly described the familiar 
conversations of Pitt, Fox, and Burke : " The most inti- 



138 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

mate friends of Mr. Fox complained of his too frequent 
ruminating silence. Mr. Pitt talked, and his talk was 
fascinating. Mr. Burke's conversation was rambling, but 
splendid and instructive beyond comparison." Let me 
add, that the finest genius of our times, is also the most 
delightful man ; he is that rarest among the rare of 
human beings, whom to have known is nearly to adore ; 
whom to have seen, to have heard, forms an era in our 
life ; whom youth remembers with enthusiasm, and whose 
presence the men and women of " the world" feel like a 
dream from which they would not awaken. His bonhomie 
attaches our hearts to him by its simplicity ; his legen- 
dary conversation makes us, for a moment, poets like 
himself.* 

But that deficient agreeableness in social life with 
which men of genius have been often reproached, may 
really result from the nature of those qualities which 
conduce to the greatness of their public character. A 
thinker whose mind is saturated with knowledge on a 
particular subject, will be apt to deliver himself authori- 
tatively ; but he will then pass for a dogmatist : should 
he hesitate, that he may correct an equivocal expression, 
or bring nearer a remote idea, he is in danger of sinking 
into pedantry or rising into genius. Even the fulness of 
knowledge has its tediousness. " It is rare," said Male- 
branche, " that those who meditate profoundly, can ex- 
plain well the objects they have meditated on ; for they 
hesitate when they have to speak ; they are scrupulous 
to convey false ideas or use inaccurate terms. They do 
not choose to speak, like others, merely for the sake of 
talking." A vivid and sudden perception of truth, or a 
severe scrutiny after it, may elevate the voice, and burst 

* This was written under the inspiration of a night's conversation, 
or rather listening to Sir Walter Scott. — I cannot bring myself to 
erase what now, alas ! has closed in the silence of a swift termination 
of his glorious existence. 



CONVERSATIONAL POWER. 139 

with an irruptive heat on the subdued tone of conversa- 
tion. These men are too much in earnest for the weak 
or the vain. Such seriousness kills their feeble animal 
spirits. Smeaton, a creative genius of his class, had a 
warmth of expression which seemed repulsive to many : 
it arose from an intense application of mind, which im- 
pelled him to break out hastily when anything was said 
that did not accord with his ideas. Persons who are ob- 
stinate till they can give up their notions with a safe con- 
science, are troublesome intimates. Often too the cold 
tardiness of decision is only the strict balancing of scep- 
ticism or candour, while obscurity as frequently may arise 
from the deficiency of previous knowledge in the listener. 
It was said that Newton in conversation did not seem to 
understand his own writings, and it was supposed that 
his memory had decayed. The fact, however, was not 
so ; and Pemberton makes a curious distinction, which 
accounts for Newton not always being ready to speak on 
subjects of which he was the sole master. " Inventors 
seem to treasure up in their own minds what they have 
found out, after another manner than those do the same 
things that have not this inventive faculty. The former, 
when they have occasion to produce their knowledge, in 
some means are obliged immediately to investigate part 
of what "they want. For this they are not equally fit at 
all times ; and thus it has often happened, that such as 
retain things chiefly by means of a very strong memory, 
have appeared oif-hand more expert than the discoverers 
themselves." 

A peculiar characteristic in the conversations of men 
of genius, which has often injured them when the listen- 
ers were not intimately acquainted with the men, are 
those sports of a vacant mind, those sudden impulses to 
throw out paradoxical opinions, and to take unexpected 
views of things in some humour of the moment. These 
fanciful and capricious ideas are the grotesque images of 



140 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

a playful mind, and are at least as frequently misrepre- 
sented as they are misunderstood. But thus the cunning 
Philistines are enabled to triumph over the strong and 
gifted man, because in the hour of confidence, and in the 
abandonment of the rnind, he had laid his head in the lap 
of wantonness, and taught them how he might be shorn 
of his strength. Dr. Johnson appears often to have in- 
dulged this amusement, both in good and ill humour. 
Even such a calm philosopher as Adam Smith, as well as 
such a child of imagination as Burns, were remarked for 
this ordinary habit of men of genius ; which, perhaps, as 
often originates in a gentle feeling of contempt for their 
auditors, as from any other cause. Many years after 
having written the above, I discovered two recent confes- 
sions which confirm the principle. A literary character, the 
late Dr. Leyden, acknowledged, that " in conversation I 
often verge so nearly on absurdity, that I know it is per- 
fectly easy to misconceive me, as well as to misrepresent 
me." And Miss Edgeworth, in describing her father's 
conversation, observes that, " his openness went too far, 
almost to imprudence ; exposing him not only to be mis- 
represented, but to be misunderstood. Those who did 
not know him intimately, often took literally what was 
either said in sport, or spoken with the intention of 
making a strong impression for some good purpose." 
Cumberland, whose conversation was delightful, hap- 
pily describes the species I have noticed. " Nonsense 
talked by men of wit and understanding in the hour 
of relaxation is of the very finest essence of convivi- 
ality, and a treat delicious to those who have the sense 
to comprehend it ; but it implies a trust in the company 
not always to be risked." The truth is, that many, 
eminent for their genius, have been remarkable in society 
for a simplicity and playfulness almost infantine. Such 
was the gaiety of Hume, such the bonhomie of Fox ; and 
or.e who had long lived in a circle of men of genius in 



SIMPLICITY OF GENIUS. 141 

the last age, was disposed to consider this infantine sim- 
plicity as characteristic of genius. It is a solitary grace, 
which can never lend its charm to a man of the world, 
whose purity of mind has long been lost in a hacknied 
intercourse with everything exterior to himself. 

But above all, what most offends, is that freedom of 
opinion which a man of genius can no more divest him- 
self of, than of the features of his face. But what if this 
intractable obstinacy be only resistance of character ? 
Burns never could account to himself why, " though 
when he had a mind he was pretty generally beloved, he 
could never get the art of commanding respect," and 
imagined it was owing to his deficiency in what Sterne 
calls " that understrapping virtue of discretion ;" " I am 
so apt to a lapsus Mngim" says this honest sinner. 
Amidst the stupidity of a formal circle, and the inanity 
of triners, however such men may conceal their impatience, 
one of them has forcibly described the reaction of this 
suppressed feeling : " The force with which it burst out 
when the pressure was taken off, gave the measure of the 
constraint which had been endured." Erasmus, that 
learned and charming writer, who was blessed with the 
genius which could enliven a folio, has well described 
himself, sum naturd propensior ad jocos quam fortasse 
deceat : — -more constitutionally inclined to pleasantry than, 
as he is pleased to add, perhaps became him. We know 
in his intimacy with Sir Thomas More, that Erasmus was 
a most exhilarating companion ; yet in his intercourse 
with the great he was not fortunate. At the first glance 
he saw through affectation and parade, his praise of folly 
was too ironical, and his freedom carried with it no pleas- 
antry for those who knew not to prize a laughing sage. 

In conversation the operations of the intellect with 
some are habitually slow, but there will be found no dif- 
ference between the result of their perceptions and those 
of a quicker nature ; and hence it is that slow-minded men 



142 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

are not, as men of the world imagine, always the dullest. 
Nicolle said of a scintillant wit, " He vanquishes me in 
the drawing-room, but surrenders to me at discretion on 
the stairs." Many a great wit has thought the wit it was 
too late to speak, and many a great reasoner has only 
reasoned when his opponent has disappeared. Conversa- 
tion with such men is a losing game ; and it is often la- 
mentable to observe how men of genius are reduced to a 
state of helplessness from not commanding their attention, 
while inferior intellects habitually are found to possess 
what is called " a ready mind." For this reason some, 
as it were in despair, have shut themselves up in silence. 
A lively Frenchman, in describing the distinct sorts of 
conversation of his literary friends, among whom was Dr. 
Franklin, energetically hits off that close observer and 
thinker, wary, even in society, by noting down " the 
silence of the celebrated Franklin." We learn from 
Cumberland that Lord Mansfield did not promote that 
conversation which gave him any pains to carry on. He 
resorted to society for simple relaxation, and could even 
find a pleasure in dulness when accompanied with pla- 
cidity. " It was a kind of cushion to his understanding," 
observes the wit. Chaucer, like La Fontaine, was more 
facetious in his tales than in his conversation; for the 
Countess of Pembroke used to rally him, observing that 
his silence was more agreeable to her than his talk. 
Tasso's conversation, which his friend Manso has attempt- 
ed to preserve for us, was not agreeable. In company 
he sat absorbed in thought, with a melancholy air ; and 
it was on one of these occasions that a person present ob- 
serving that this conduct was indicative of madness, that 
Tasso, who had heard him, looking on him without emo- 
tion, asked whether he was ever acquainted with a mad- 
man who knew when to hold his tongue ! Malebranche 
tells us that one of these mere men of learning, who can 
only venture to praise antiquity, once said, " I have seen 



CONTRADICTORY CHARACTER. 143 

Descartes ; I knew Mm, and frequently have conversed 
rcdth him ; he was a good sort of man, and was not want- 
ing in sense, but he had nothing extraordinary in him." 
Had Aristotle spoken French instead of Greek, and had 
this man frequently conversed with him, unquestionably 
he would not have discovered, even in this idol of anti- 
quity, anything extraordinary. Two thousand years 
would have been wanting for our learned critic's percep- 
tions. 

It is remarkable that the conversationists have rarely 
proved to be the abler writers'. He whose fancy is sus- 
ceptible of excitement in the presence of his auditors, 
making the minds of men run with his own, seizing on 
the first impressions, and touching the shadows and out- 
lines of things — with a memory where all lies ready at 
hand, quickened by habitual associations, and varying 
with all those extemporary changes and fugitive colours 
which melt away in the rainbow of conversation ; with 
that wit, which is only wit in one place, and for a time ; 
with that vivacity of animal spirits which often exists 
separately from the more retired intellectual powers — 
this man can strike out wit by habit, and pour forth a 
stream of phrase which has sometimes been imagined to 
require only to be written down to be read with the same 
delight with which it was heard ; but he cannot print his 
tone, nor his air and manner, nor the contagion of his 
hardihood. All the while we were not sensible of the 
flutter of his ideas, the incoherence of his transitions, his 
vague notions, his doubtful assertions, and his meagre 
knowledge. A pen is the extinguisher of this luminary. 

A curious contrast occurred between Buffon and his 
friend Montbelliard, who was associated in his great work. 
The one possessed the reverse qualities of the other: 
Buffon, whose style in his composition is elaborate and 
declamatory, was in conversation coarse and careless. 
Pleading that conversation with him was only a relaxa- 



144: LITERARY CHARACTER. 

tion, he rather sought than avoided the idiom and slang 
of the mob, when these seemed expressive and facetious ; 
while Montbelliard threw every charm of animation over 
his delightful talk : but when he took his seat at the rival 
desk of Buifon, an immense interval separated them ; he 
whose tongue dropped the honey and the music of the 
bee, handled a pen of iron; while Buffon's was the soft 
pencil of the philosophical painter of nature. Cowley and 
Killegrew furnish another instance. Cowley was embar- 
rassed in conversation, and had no quickness in argument 
or reply: a mind pensive and elegant could not be struck 
at to catch fire : while with Killegrew the sparkling bub- 
bles of his fancy rose and dropped.* When the delight- 
ful conversationist wrote, the deception ceased. Denham, 
who knew them both, hit off the difference between them : 

Had Cowley ne'er spoke, Killegrew ne'er writ, 
Combined in one they had made a matchless wit. 

Not, however, that a man of genius does not throw out 
many things in conversation which have only been found 
admirable when the public possessed them. The public 
often widely differ from the individual, and a century's 
opinion may intervene between them. The fate of genius 
is sometimes that of the Athenian sculptor, who submit- 
ted his colossal Minerva to a private party for inspection. 
Before the artist they trembled for his daring chisel, and 
the man of genius smiled ; behind him they calumniated, 
and the man of genius forgave. Once fixed in a public 
place, in the eyes of the whole city, the statue was the 

* Killegrew's eight plays, upon which his character as an author rests, 
have not been republished with one exception — the Parson's Wedding — 
which is given in Dodsley's collection ; and which is sufficient to sat- 
isfy curiosity. He was a favourite with Charles the Second, and had 
great influence with him. Some of his witty court jests are preserved, 
but are too much imbued with the spirit of the age to be quoted here. 
He was sometimes useful by devoting his satiric sallies to urge the king 
to his duties. — Ed. 



CONTRADICTORY CHARACTER. 145 

Divinity ! There is a certain distance at which opinions, 
as well as statues, must be viewed. 

But enough of those defects of men of genius which 
often attend their conversations. Must we then bow to 
authorial dignity, and kiss hands, because they are inked ? 
Must we bend to the artist, who considers us as nothing 
unless we are canvas or marble under his hands ? Are 
there not men of genius the grace of society and the 
charm of their circle ? Fortunate men ! more blest than 
their brothers ; but for this, they are not the more men 
of genius, nor the others less. To how many of the ordi- 
nary intimates of a superior genius who complain of his 
defects might one say, " Do his productions not delight 
and sometimes surprise you ? — You are silent ! I beg 
your pardon; the public has informed you of a great 
name ; you would not otherwise have perceived the pre- 
cious talent of your neighbour : you know little of your 
friend but his name," The personal familiarity of ordinary 
minds with a man of genius has often produced a ludi- 
crous prejudice. A Scotchman, to whom the name of a 
Dr. Robertson had travelled down, was curious to know 
who he was. — " Tour neighbour !" — But he could not per- 
suade himself that the man whom he conversed with was 
the great historian of his country. Even a good man 
could not believe in the announcement of the Messiah, 
from the same sort of prejudice : " Can there anything 
good come out of Xazareth ?" 

Suffer a man of genius to be such as nature and habit 
have formed him, and he will then be the most interest- 
ing companion ; then will you see nothing but his char- 
acter. Akenside, in conversation with select Mends, often 
touched by a romantic enthusiasm, would pass in review 
those eminent ancients whom he loved ; he imbued with 
his poetic faculty even the details of their lives; and 
seemed another Plato while he poured libations to their 
memory in the language of Plato, among those whose 
10 



U6 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

studies and feeling were congenial with his own. Rom- 
ney, with a fancy entirely his own, would give vent to 
his effusions, uttered in a hurried accent and elevated 
tone, and often accompanied by tears, to which by con- 
stitution he was prone ; thus Cumberland, from personal 
bitim&cy, describes the conversation of this man of genius. 
Even the temperate sensibility of Hume was touched by 
the bursts of feeling of Rousseau ; who, he says, " in con- 
versation kindles often to a degree of heat which looks 
like inspiration." Barry, that unhappy genius ! was the 
most repulsive of men in his exterior. The vehemence 
of his language, the wildness of his glance, his habit of 
introducing vulgar oaths, which, by some unlucky associ- 
ation of habit, served him as expletives and interjections, 
communicated even a horror to some. A pious and a 
learned lady, who had felt intolerable uneasiness in his 
presence, did not, however, leave this man of genius that 
very evening without an impression that she had never 
heard so divine a man in her life. The conversation hap- 
pening to turn on that principle of benevolence which 
pervades Christianity, and on the meekness of the Founder, 
it gave Barry an opportunity of opening on the character 
of Jesus with that copiousness of heart and mind which, 
once heard, could never be forgotten. That artist indeed 
had long in his meditations an ideal head of Christ, which 
he was always talking of executing : " It is here !" he 
would cry, striking his head. That which baffled the in- 
vention, as we are told, of Leonardo da Yinci, who left 
his Christ headless, having exhausted his creative faculty 
among the apostles, this imaginative picture of the myste- 
rious union of a divine and human nature, never ceased, 
even when conversing, to haunt the reveries of Barry. 

There are few authors and artists who are not eloquent- 
ly instructive on that class of knowledge or that depart- 
ment of art which reveals the mastery of their life. Their 
conversations of this nature affect the mind to a distant 



ELOQUENCE OF BARRY. 147 

period of life. Who, having listened to such, has forgotten 
What a man of genius lias said at such moments? Who 
dwells not on the single thought or the glowing expres- 
sion, stamped in the heat of the moment, which came 
from its source? Then the mind of genius rises as the 
melody of the iEolian harp, when the winds suddenly 
sweep over the strings — it comes and goes — and leaves 
a sweetness beyond the harmonies of art. 

The Miscellanea of Politian are not only the result of 
his studies in the rich library of Lorenzo de' Medici, but 
of conversations which had passed in those rides which 
Lorenzo, accompanied by Politian, preferred to the pomp 
of cavalcades. When the Cardinal de Cabassolle strayed 
with Petrarch about his valley in many a wandering dis- 
course, they sometimes extended their walks to such a 
distance, that the servant sought them in vain to an- 
nounce the dinner-hour, and found them returning in the 
evening. When Helvetius enjoyed the social conversa- 
tion of a literary friend, he described it as " a chase of 
ideas." Such are the literary conversations which Home 
Tooke alluded to, when he said " I assure you, we find 
more difficulty to finish than to begin our conversations." 

The natural and congenial conversations of men of let- 
ters and of artists must then be those which are associ- 
ated with their pursuits, and these are of a different com- 
plexion with the talk of men of the world, the objects of 
which are drawn from the temporary passions of party- 
men, or the variable on dits of triflers — topics studiously 
rejected from these more tranquilising conversations. 
Diamonds can only be polished by their own dust, and 
are only shaped by the friction of other diamonds; and 
so it happens with literary men and artists. 

A meeting of this nature has been recorded by Cicero, 
which himself and Atticus had with Varro in the coun- 
try. Varro arriving from Rome in their neighbourhood 
somewhat fatigued, had sent a messenger to his friends. 



148 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

"As soon as we had heard these tidings," says Cicero, 
"we could not delay hastening to see one who was 
attached to us by the same pursuits and by former 
friendship." They set off, but found Varro half way, 
urged by the same eager desire to join them. They con- 
ducted him to Cicero's villa. Here, while Cicero was in- 
quiring after the news of Rome, Atticus interrupted the 
political rival of Ca3sar, observing, " Let us leave off in- 
quiring after things which cannot be heard without pain. 
Rather ask about what we know, for Varro's muses are 
longer silent than they used to be, yet surely he has not 
forsaken them, but rather conceals what he writes." — 
" By no means !" replied Varro, " for I deem him to be a 
whimsical man to write what he wishes to suppress. I 
have indeed a great work in hand (on the Latin lan- 
guage), long designed for Cicero." The conversation 
then took its natural turn by Atticus having got rid of 
the political anxiety of Cicero. Such, too, were the con- 
versations which passed at the literary residence of the 
Medici family, which was described, with as much truth 
as fancy, as " the Lyceum of philosophy, the Arcadia of 
poets, and the Academy of painters." We have a pleas- 
ing instance of such a meeting of literary friends in those 
conversations which passed in Pope's garden, where there 
was often a remarkable union of nobility and literary 
men. There Thomson, Mallet, Gay, Hooke, and Glover 
met Cobham, Bathurst, Chesterfield, Lyttleton, and other 
lords ; there some of those poets found patrons, and Pope 
himself discovered critics. The contracted views of Spence 
have unfortunately not preserved those literary conver- 
sations, but a curious passage has dropped from the pen 
of Lord Bolingbroke, in what his lordship calls " a letter 
to Pope," often probably passed over among his political 
tracts. It breathes the spirit of those delightful conver- 
sations. " My thoughts," writes his lordship, " in what 
order soever they flow, shall be communicated to you 



LITERARY SOLITUDE. 149 

just as they pass through my mind—]u^t as they used to 
be when we conversed together on these or any other sub- 
ject ; when we sauntered alone, or as we have often done 
with good Arbuthnot, and the jocose Dean of St. Patrick, 
among the multiplied scenes of your little garden. The 
theatre is large enough for my ambition." Such a scene 
opens a beautiful subject for a curious portrait-painter. 
These literary groups in the garden of Pope, sauntering, 
or divided in confidential intercourse, would furnish a 
scene of literary repose and enjoyment among some of 
the most illustrious names in our literature. 



CHAPTER X. 



Literary solitude. — Its necessity. — Its pleasures. — Of visitors by 
profession. — Its inconveniences. 

THE literary character is reproached with an extreme 
passion for retirement, cultivating those insulating 
habits, which, while they are great interruptions, and 
even weakeners, of domestic happiness, induce at the 
same time in public life to a secession from its cares, and 
an avoidance of its active duties. Yet the vacancies of 
retired men are eagerly filled by the many unemployed 
men of the world happily framed for its business. We do 
not hear these accusations raised against the painter who 
wears away his days by his easel, or the musician by the 
side of his instrument ; and much less should we against 
the legal and commercial character ; yet all these are as 
much withdrawn from public and private life as the lit- 
erary character. The desk is as insulating as the library. 
Yet the man who is working for his individual interest is 
more highly estimated than the retired student, whose 
disinterested pursuits are at least more profitable to the 



150 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

world than to himself. La Bruyere discovered the world's 
erroneous estimate of literary labour : " There requires a 
better name," he says, " to be bestowed on the leisure 
(the idleness he calls it) of the literary character, — to 
meditate, to compose, to read and to be tranquil, should 
be called working." But so invisible is the progress of 
intellectual pursuits and so rarely are the objects palpable 
to the observers, that the literary character appears to be 
denied for his pursuits, what cannot be refused to every 
other. That unremitting application and unbroken series 
of their thoughts, admired in every profession, is only 
complained of in that one whose professors with so much 
sincerity mourn over the brevity of life, which has often 
closed on them while sketching their works. 

It is, however, only in solitude that the genius of emi- 
nent men has been formed. There their first thoughts 
sprang, and there it will become them to find their last : 
for the solitude of old age — and old age must be often in 
solitude — may be found the happiest with the literary 
character. Solitude is the nurse of enthusiasm, and en- 
thusiasm is the true parent of genius. In all ages solitude 
has been called for — has been flown to. No considerable 
work was ever composed till its author, like an ancient 
magician, first retired to the grove, or to the closet, to in- 
vocate. When genius languishes in an irksome solitude 
among crowds, that is the moment to fly into seclusion 
and meditation. There is a society in the deepest solitude ; 
in all the men of genius of the past 

First of your kind, Society divine ! 

and in themselves ; for there only can they indulge in the 
romances of their soul, and there only can they occupy 
themselves in their dreams and their vigils, and, with 
the morning, fly without interruption to the labour they 
had reluctantly quitted. If there be not periods when 
they shall allow their days to melt harmoniously into 



SOLITUDE OF GENIUS. 151 

each other, if they do not pass whole weeks together in 
their study, without intervening absences, they will not 
be admitted into the last recess of the Muses. Whether 
their glory come from researches, or from enthusiasm, 
time, with not a feather ruffled on his wings, time alone 
opens discoveries and kindles meditation. This desert of 
solitude, so vast and so dreary to the man of the world, 
to the man of genius is the magical garden of Armida, 
whose enchantments arose amidst solitude, while solitude 
was everywhere among those enchantments. 

Whenever Michael Angelo, that " divine madman," as 
Richardson once wrote on the back of one of his draw- 
ings, was meditating on some great design, he closed 
himself up from the world, " Why do you lead so soli- 
tary a life ?" asked a friend. " Art," replied the sublime 
artist, " Art is a jealous god ; it requires the whole and 
entire man." During his mighty labour in the Sistine 
Chapel, he refused to have any communication with any 
person even at his own house. Such undisturbed and 
solitary attention is demanded even by undoubted genius 
as the price of performance. How then shall we deem 
of that feebler race who exult in occasional excellence, 
and who so often deceive themselves by mistaking the 
evanescent flashes of genius for that holier flame which 
burns on its altar, because the fuel is incessantly sup- 
plied? 

We observe men of genius, in public situations, sigh- 
ing for this solitude. Amidst the impediments of the 
world, they are doomed to view their intellectual ban- 
quet often rising before them, like some fairy delusion, 
never to taste it. The great Verulam often complained 
of the disturbances of his public life, and rejoiced in the 
occasional retirement he stole from public affairs. " And 
now, because I am in the country, I will send you some 
of my country fruits, which with me are good medita- 
tions ; when I am in the city, they are choked with 



152 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

business." Lord Clarendon, whose life so happily com- 
bined the contemplative with the active powers of man, 
dwells on three periods of retirement which he enjoyed ; 
he always took pleasure in relating the great tranquillity 
of spirit experienced during his solitude at Jersey, where 
for more than two years, employed on' his history, he 
daily wrote " one sheet of large paper with his own 
hand." At the close of his life, his literary labours in 
his other retirements are detailed with a proud satisfac- 
tion. Each of his solitudes occasioned a new acquisi- 
tion ; to one he owed the Spanish, to another the French, 
and to a third the Italian literature. The public are not 
yet acquainted with the fertility of Lord Clarendon's 
literary labours. It was not vanity that induced Scipio 
to declare of solitude, that it had no loneliness for him, 
since he voluntarily retired amidst a glorious life to his 
Linternum. Cicero was uneasy amid applauding Rome, 
and has distinguished his numerous works by the titles 
of his various villas. Aulus Gellius marked his solitude 
by his " Attic Nights." The " Golden G*ove " of Jeremy 
Taylor is the produce of his retreat at the Earl of Car- 
berry's seat in Wales ; and the " Diversions of Purley " 
preserved a man of genius for posterity. Voltaire had 
talents well adapted for society; but at one period 
of his life he passed five years in the most secret seclu- 
sion, and indeed usually lived in retirement. Montes- 
quieu quitted the brilliant circles of Paris for his books 
and his meditations, and was ridiculed by the gay 
triflers he deserted ; " but my great work," he observes 
in triumph, " avance a pas de geant." Harrington, to 
compose his " Oceana," severed himself from the society 
of his friends. Descartes, inflamed by genius, hires an 
obscure house in an unfrequented quarter at Paris, and 
there he passes two years, unknown to his acquaintance. 
Adam Smith, after the publication of his first work, with- 
drew into a retirement that lasted ten years : even 



VALUE OF TIME. 153 

Hunie rallies him for separating himself from the 
world ; but by this means the great political inquirer 
satisfied the world by his great work. And thus it was 
with men of genius long ere Petrarch withdrew to his 
Val chiusa. 

The interruption of visitors by profession has been 
feelingly lamented by men of letters. The mind, matur- 
ing its speculations, feels the unexpected conversation of 
cold ceremony chilling as March winds over the blos- 
soms of the Spring. Those unhappy beings who wander 
from house to house, privileged by the charter of society 
to obstruct the knowledge they cannot impart, to weary 
because they are wearied, or to seek amusement at the 
cost of others, belong to that class of society which 
have affixed no other idea to time than that of getting 
rid of it. These are judges not the best qualified to 
comprehend the nature and evil of their depredations in 
the silent apartment of the studious, who may be often 
driven to exclaim, in the words of the Psalmist, " Yerily 
I have cleansed my heart in vain, and washed my hands 
in innocency : for all the day long have I been plagued, 
and chastened every morning" 

When Montesquieu was deeply engaged in his great 
work, he writes to a friend : — " The favour which your 
friend Mr. Hein often does me to pass his mornings with 
me, occasions great damage to my work as well by his 
impure French as the length of his details." — "We are 
afraid," said some of those visitors to Baxter, " that we 
break in upon your time." — " To be sure you do," replied 
the disturbed and blunt scholar. To hint as gently as 
he could to his friends that he was avaricious of time, 
one of the learned Italians had a prominent inscription 
over the door of his study, intimating that whoever 
remained there must join in his labours. The amiable 
Melancthon, incapable of a harsh expression, when he 
received these idle visits, only noted down the time he 



154: LITERARY CHARACTER. 

had expended, that he might reanimate his industry, 
and not lose a day. Evelyn, continually importuned by 
morning visitors, or " taken up by other impertinencies 
of my life in the country," stole his hours from his night 
rest " to redeem his losses." The literary character has 
been driven to the most inventive shifts to escape the 
irruption of a formidable party at a single rush, who 
cuter, without "besieging or beseeching," as Milton has 
it. The late Mr. Ellis, a man of elegant tastes and poeti- 
cal temperament, on one of these occasions, at his country- 
house, assured a literary friend, that when driven to 
the last, he usually made his escape by a leap out of the 
window ; and Boileau has noticed a similar dilemma when 
at the villa of the President Lamoignon, while they were 
holding their delightful conversations in his grounds. 

Quelquefois de facheux arrivent trois volees, 
Que du pare a l'instant assiegent les allees ; 
Alors sauve qui peut, et quatre fois heureux 
Qui sait s'echapper, a quelque antre ignore d'eux. 

Brand Hollis endeavoured to hold out "the idea of 
singularity as a shield;" and the great Robert Boyle 
was compelled to advertise in a newspaper that he must 
decline visits on certain days, that he might have leisure 
to finish some of his works.* 

* This curious advertisement is preserved in Dr. Birch's M Life of 
Boyle," p. 272. Boyle's labours were so exhausting to his naturally 
weak frame, and so continuous from his eager desire for investigation, 
that this advertisement was concocted by the advice of his physician, 
" to desire to be excused from receiving visits (unless upon occasions 
very extraordinary) two days in the week, namely, on the forenoon of 
Tuesdays and Fridays (both foreign post days), and on Wednesdays 
and Saturdays in the afternoons, that he may have some time, both to 
recruit his spirits, to range his papers, and fill up the lacuna of them, 
and to take some care of his affairs in Ireland, which are very much 
disordered and have their face often changed by the public calamities 
there." He ordered likewise a board to be placed over his door, with 
an inscription signifying when he did. and when he did not receive 
visits. — Ed. 



SOLITUDE OF GENIUS. 155 

Boccaccio has given an interesting account of the 
mode of life of the studious Petrarch, for on a visit he 
found that Petrarch would not suffer his hours of study 
to be broken into even by the person whom of all men he 
loved most, and did not quit his morning studies for his 
guest, who during that time occupied himself by reading 
or transcribing the works of his master. At the decline 
of day, Petrarch quitted his study for his garden, where 
he delighted to open his heart in mutual confidence. 

But this solitude, at first a necessity, and then a 
pleasure, at length is not borne without repining. To 
tame the fervid wildness of youth to the strict regulari- 
ties of study, is a sacrifice performed by the votary ; but 
even Milton appears to have felt this irksome period of 
life ; for in the preface to " Smectymnuus," he says : — " It 
is but justice not to defraud of due esteem the wearisome 
labours and studious watchings wherein I have spent 
and tired out almost a whole youth." Cowley, that 
enthusiast for seclusion, in his retirement calls himself 
"the Melancholy Cowley." I have seen an original 
letter of this poet to Evelyn, where he expresses his 
eagerness to see Sir George Mackenzie's "Essay on 
Solitude ;" for a copy of which he had sent over the town, 
without obtaining one, being " either all bought up, or 
burnt in the fire of London."* — "I am the more de- 
sirous," he says, " because it is a subject in which I am 
most deeply interested. Thus Cowley was requiring a 

* This event happening when London was the chief emporium of 
books, occasioned many printed just before the time to be excessively- 
rare. The booksellers of Paternoster-row had removed their stock to 
the vaults below St. Paul's for safety as the fire approached them. 
Among the stock was Prynne's records, vol. iii., which were all burnt 
except a few copies which had been sent into the country, a perfect 
set has been valued in consequence at one hundred pounds. The rarity 
of all books published about the era of the great fire of London induced 
one curious collector, Dr. Bliss, of Oxford, to especially devote himself 
U'< gathering such in his library. — Ed. 



156 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

book to confirm his predilection, and we know he made 
the experiment, which did not prove a happy one. We 
find even Gibbon, with all his fame about him, antici- 
pating the dread he entertained of solitude in advanced 
life. " I feel, and shall continue to feel, that domestic 
solitude, however it may be alleviated by the world, by 
study, and even by friendship, is a comfortless state, 
which will grow more painful as I descend in the vale of 
years." And again: — "Your visit has only served to 
remind me that man, however amused or occupied in his 
closet, was not made to live alone." 

Had the mistaken notions of Sprat not deprived us of 
Cowley's correspondence, we doubtless had viewed the 
picture of lonely genius touched by a tender pencil.* 
But we have Shenstone, and Gray, and Swift. The heart 
of Shenstone bleeds in the dead oblivion of solitude : — 
" Now I am come from a visit, every little uneasiness is 
sufficient to introduce my whole train of melancholy con- 
siderations, and to make me utterly dissatisfied with the 
life I now lead, and the life I foresee I shall lead. I am 
angry, and envious, and dejected, and frantic, and disre- 
gard all present things, as becomes a madman to do. I 
am infinitely pleased, though it is a gloomy joy, with the 
application of Dr. Swift's complaint, that he is forced to 
die in a rage, like a rat in a poisoned hole." Let the 
lover of solitude muse on its picture throughout the year, 
in this stanza, by the same amiable but suffering poet : — 

Tedious again to curse the drizzling day, 
Again to trace the wintry tracks of snow, 

Or. soothed by vernal airs, again survey 

The self-same hawthorns bud, and cowslips blow. 

Swift's letters paint with terrifying colors a picture of 
solitude ; and at length his despair closed with idiotism. 
Even the playful muse of Gresset throws a sombre queru- 
lousness over the solitude of men of genius : — 

* See the article on Cowley in " Calamities of Authors." 



MEDITATIONS OP GENIUS. 157 

Je les vois, victiraes du genie, 
Au foible prix d'un eclat passager, 
Vivre isoles, sans jouir de la vie I 
Yingt ans d'ennuis pour quelques jours de gloire. 

Such are the necessity, the pleasures, and the incon- 
veniences of solitude ! It ceases to be a question whether 
men of genius should blend with the masses of society ; 
for whether in solitude, or in the world, of all others they 
must learn to live with themselves. It is in the world 
that they borrow the sparks of thought that fly upwards 
and perish : but the flame of genius can only be lighted 
in their own solitary breast. 



CHAPTER XI. 



The meditations of genius. — A work on the art of meditation not yet 
produced. — Predisposing the mind. — Imagination awakens imagina- 
tion. — Generating feelings by music. — Slight habits. — Darkness and 
silence, by suspending the exercise of our senses, increase the vi- 
vacity of our conceptions. — The arts of memory. — Memory the foun- 
dation of genius. — Inventions by several to preserve their own 
moral and literary character. — And to assist their studies. — The 
meditations of genius depend on habit. — Of the night-time. — A day 
of meditation should precede a day of composition. — Works of mag- 
nitude from slight conceptions. — Of thoughts never written. — The 
art of meditation exercised at all hours and places. — Continuity of 
attention the source of philosophical discoveries. — Stillness of medi- 
tation the first state of existence in genius. 

A CONTINUITY of attention, a patient quietness of 
mind, forms one of the characteristics of genius. 
To think, and to feel, constitute the two grand divisions 
of men of genius — the men of reasoning and the men of 
imagination. There is a thread in our thoughts, as there 
is a pulse in our hearts ; he who can hold the one, knows 



158 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

how to think ; and he who can move the other, knows 
how to feel. 

A work on the art of meditation has not yet been pro- 
duced ; yet such a work might prove of immense advan- 
tage to him who never happened to have more than one 
solitary idea. The pursuit of a single principle has pro- 
duced a great system. Thus probably we owe Adam 
Smith to the French economists. And a loose hint has 
conducted to a new discovery. Thus Girard, taking ad- 
vantage of an idea first started by Fenelon, produced 
his " Synonymes." But while, in every manual art, every 
great workman improves on his predecessor, of the art of 
the mind, notwithstanding the facility of practice, and 
our incessant experience, millions are yet ignorant of the 
first rudiments ; and men of genius themselves are rarely 
acquainted with the materials they are working on. Cer- 
tain constituent principles of the mind itself, which the 
study of metaphysics curiously developes, offer many im- 
portant regulations in this desirable art. We may even 
suspect, since men of genius in the present age have con- 
fided to us the secrets of their studies, that this art may 
be carried on by more obvious means than at first would 
appear, and even by mechanical contrivances and prac- 
tical habits. A mind well organised may be regulated 
by a single contrivance, as by a bit of lead we govern 
the fine machinery by which we track the flight of time. 
Many secrets in this art of the mind yet remain as insu- 
lated facts, which may hereafter enter into an experi- 
mental history. 

Johnson has a curious observation on the Mind itself. 
He thinks it obtains a stationary point, from whence it 
can never advance, occurring before the middle of life. 
" When the powers of nature have attained their intended 
energy, they can be no more advanced. The shrub can 
never become a tree. Nothing then remains but prac- 
tice and experience ; and perhaps why they do so little 



POWERS OF MIND. 159 

may he worth inquiry." * The result of this inquiry 
would probably lay a broader foundation for this art of 
the mind than we have hitherto possessed. Adam 
Ferguson has expressed himself with sublimity : — " The 
lustre which man casts around him, like the flame of a 
meteor, shines only while his motion continues ; the mo- 
ments of rest and of obscurity are the same." What is 
this art of meditation, but the power of withdrawing 
• ourselves from the world, to view that world moving 
within ourselves while we are in repose ? As the artist 
by an optical instrument, reflects and concentrates the 
boundless landscape around him, and patiently traces 
all nature in that small space. 

There is a government of our thoughts. The mind of 
genius can be made to take a particular disposition or 
train of ideas. It is a remarkable circumstance in the 
studies of men of genius, that previous to composition 
they have often awakened their imagination by the im- 
agination of their favourite masters. By touching a mag- 
net, they become a magnet. A circumstance has been 
recorded of Gray, by Mr. Mathias, " as worthy of all ac- 
ceptation among the higher votaries of the divine art, 
when they are assured that Mr. Gray never sate down to 
compose any poetry without previously, and for a con- 
siderable time, reading the works of Spenser." But the 
circumstance was not unusual with Malherbe, Corneille, 
and Racine ; and the most fervid verses of Homer, and 
the most tender of Euripides, were often repeated by 
Milton. Even antiquity exhibits the same exciting inter- 
course of the mind of genius. Cicero informs us how 
his eloquence caught inspiration from a constant study 
of the Latin and Grecian poetry ; and it has been record- 
ed of Pompey, who was great even in his youth, that he 
never undertook any considerable enterprise without 

*I recommend the reader to turn to the whole passage, in Johnson's 
"Letters to Mrs. Thrale," vol L, p. 296. 



160 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

animating his genius by having read to him the character 
of Achilles in the first Iliad y although he acknowledged 
that the enthusiasm he caught came rather from the poet 
than the hero. When Bossuet had to compose a funeral 
oration, he was accustomed to retire for several days to 
his study, to ruminate over the pages of Homer ; and 
when asked the reason of this habit, he exclaimed, in 
these lines — 

magnam mini mentem, animumque 

Delhi s inspiret Vates. 

It is on the same principle of predisposing the mind, 
that many have first generated their feelings by the 
symphonies of music. Alfieri often before he wrote 
prepared his mind by listening to music : " Almost all 
my tragedies were sketched in my mind either in the act 
of hearing music, or a few hours after" — a circumstance 
which has been recorded of many others. Lord Bacon 
had music often played in the room adjoining his study : 
Milton listened to his organ for his solemn inspiration, 
and music was even necessary to Warburton. The 
symphonies which awoke in the poet sublime emotions, 
might have composed the inventive mind of the great 
critic in the visions of his theoretical mysteries. A cele- 
brated French preacher, Bourdaloue or Massillon, was 
once found playing on a violin, to screw his mind up to 
the pitch, preparatory for his sermon, which within a 
short interval he was to preach before the court. Cur- 
ran's favourite mode of meditation was with his violin in 
his hand; for hours together would he forget himself, 
running voluntaries over the strings, while his imagina- 
tion in collecting its tones was opening all his faculties 
for the coming emergency at the bar. When Leonardo 
da Yinci was painting his " Lisa," commonly called La 
Joconde, he had musicians constantly in waiting, whose 
light harmonies, by their associations, inspired feelings of 

Tipsy dance and revelry. 



PECULIARITIES OF aENIUS. 161 

There are slight habits which may be contracted by 
genius, which assist the action of the mind ; but these 
are of a nature so trivial, that they seem ridiculous 
when they have not been experienced : but the imagina- 
tive race exist by the acts of imagination. Haydn 
would never sit down to compose without being in full 
dress, with his great diamond ring, and the finest 
paper to write down his musical compositions. Rousseau 
has told us, when occupied by his celebrated romance, of 
the influence of the rose-coloured knots of ribbon which 
tied his portfolio, his fine paper, his brilliant ink, and his 
gold sand. Similar facts are related of many. "When- 
ever Apostolo Zeno, the predecessor of Metastasio, pre- 
pared, himself to compose a new drama, he used to say 
to himself, " Apostolo ! recordati ehe questa b la prima 
opera che clai in luce" — " Apostolo ! remember that this 
is the first opera you are presenting to the public." We 
are scarcely aware how we may govern our thoughts by 
means of our sensations : De Luc was subject to violent 
bursts of passion ; but he calmed the interior tumult by 
the artifice of filling his mouth with sweets and comfits. 
When Goldoni found his sleep disturbed by the obtrusive 
ideas still floating from the studies of the day, he con- 
trived to- lull himself to rest by conning in his mind a 
vocabulary of the Venetian dialect, translating some 
word into Tuscan and French ; which being a very unin- 
teresting occupation, at the third or fourth version this 
recipe never failed. This was an art of withdrawing 
attention from the greater to the less emotion ; by which, 
as the interest weakened, the excitement ceased. Men- 
delssohn, whose feeble and too sensitive frame was often 
reduced to the last stage of suffering by intellectual exer- 
tion, when engaged in any point of difficulty, would in 
an instant contrive a perfect cessation from thinking, by 
mechanically going to the window, and counting the 
tiles upon the roof of his neighbour's house. Such facte 
11 



162 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

show how much art may be concerned in the government 
of our thoughts. 

It is an unquestionable feet that some profound think- 
ers cannot pursue their intellectual operations amidst the 
distractions of light and noise. With them, attention 
to what is passing within is interrupted by the discordant 
impressions from objects pressing and obtruding on the 
external senses. There are indeed instances, as in the 
case of Priestley and others, of authors who have pursued 
their literary works amidst conversation and their family ; 
but such minds are not the most original thinkers, and 
the most refined writers ; or their subjects are of a nature 
which requires little more than judgment and diligence. 
It is the mind only in its fulness which can brood over 
thoughts till the incubation produces vitality. Such is 
the feeling in this act of study. In Plutarch's time they 
showed a subterraneous place of study built by De- 
mosthenes, and where he often continued for two or 
three months together. Malebranche, Hobbes, Corneille, 
and others, darkened their apartment when they wrote, 
to concentrate their thoughts, as Milton says of the 
mind, " in the spacious circuits of her musing." It is in 
proportion as we can suspend the exercise of all our other 
senses that the liveliness of our conception increases — this 
is the observation of the most elegant metaphysician of 
our times ; and when Lord Chesterfield advised that his 
pupil — whose attention wandered on every passing object, 
which unfitted him for study — should be instructed in a 
darkened apartment, he was aware of this principle ; 
the boy would learn, and retain what he learned, ten 
times as well. We close our eyes whenever we would 
collect our mind together, or trace more distinctly an 
object which seems to have faded away in our recollec- 
tion. The study of an author or an artist would be ill 
placed in the midst of a beautiful landscape ; the " Pen- 
seroso" of Milton, " hid from day's garish eye," is the 



CONDUCT OF THOUGHT. 163 

man of genius. A secluded and naked apartment, with 
nothing but a desk, a chair, and a single sheet of paper, 
was for fifty years the study of Buffon ; the single orna- 
ment was a print of Newton placed before his eyes — 
nothing broke into the unity of his reveries. Cumber- 
land's liveliest comedy, TJie West Indian, was written in 
an unfurnished apartment, close in fron* of an Irish turf- 
stack ; and our comic writer was fully aware of the 
advantages of the situation. " In all my hours of study," 
says that elegant writer, " it has been through life my 
object so to locate myself as to have little or nothing to 
distract my attention, and therefore brilliant rooms or 
pleasant prospects I have ever avoided. A dead wall, or, 
as in the present case, an Irish turf-stack, are not attrac- 
tions that can call off the fancy from its pursuits ; and 
whilst in these pursuits it can find interest and occupa- 
tion, it wants no outward aid to cheer it. My father, I 
believe, rather wondered at my choice." The principle 
ascertained, the consequences are obvious. 

The arts of memory have at all times excited the at- 
tention of the studious ; they open a world of undivulged 
mysteries, where every one seems to form some discovery 
of his own, rather exciting his astonishment than enlarg- 
ing his comprehension. Le Sage, a modern philosopher, 
had a memory singularly defective. Incapable of acquiring 
languages, and deficient in all those studies which depend 
on the exercise of the memory, it became the object of 
his subsequent exertions to supply this deficiency by 
the order and method he observed in arranging every 
new fact or idea he obtained ; so that in reality with a 
very bad memory, it appears that he was still enabled 
to recall at will any idea or any knowledge which he 
had stored up. John Hunter happily illustrated the 
advantages which every one derives from putting his 
thoughts in writing, " it resembles a tradesman taking 
stock ; without which he never knows either what he pos- 



LITERARY CHIRAC?: 

Bene r in what L The late William 

in of an _ • peri- 

ment in me:. | divided 

- : he 

mm, 

j all 

mmdn I of age; - lied 

s B] 8 foi -mall reminiscences, within ten columns; 
rinient fa eon- 

man 
in, relates of bin - the 

mo>: _ L and amidst darkness, 

:..! geometrically com- 
pos* aid of his imagina- 
and me:. I when in the daytime he verified 
ne and ti 1 always 
found them true. Unqui - stonishing in- 

I memory depend on the' prac- 
lent ass- 
When we reflect that wl... and what- 

irniHrrl - f all the knowl- 

□ 1 all th< 
experienced through life, how desirable would be 
that art which si _ - which have 

I revivify the emotions which other imi 

igh 
perl manageable of all oth 

_ - 
cumulaiL. _ : of genius is imagined 

- 
tion of Genius, whenever I with 

imagination and passion; with men of genius it is 
chronology:. ots it of emotions ; hi 

remember nothing that is not interesting to their 
feelings Persons of inferior ty have imper: 

lections fron. npressi the in- 



THOUGHTS UNEXECUTED. 1^5 

eidents of the great novelist often founded on the com- 
mon ones of life ? and the personages so admirably alive 
in his fictions, were they not discovered among the 
crowd ? The ancients have described the Muses as the 
daughters of Memory ; an elegant fiction, indicating the 
natural and intimate connexion between imagination and 
reminiscence. 

The arts of memory will form a saving-bank of genius, 
to which it may have recourse, as a wealth which it can 
accumulate imperceptibly amidst the ordinary expendi- 
ture. Locke taught us the first rudiments of this art, 
when he showed us how he stored his thoughts and his 
tacts, by an artificial arrangement ; and Addison, before 
he commenced his " Spectators," had amassed three folios 
of materials. But the higher step will be the volume 
which shall give an account of a man to himself, in 
which a single observation immediately becomes a clue 
of past knowledge, restoring to him his lost studies, and 
his evanescent existence. Self-contemplation makes the 
man more nearly entire : and to preserve the past, is half 
of immortality. 

The worth of the diary must depend on the diarist ; 
but " Of the things which concern himself," as Marcus 
Antoninus entitles his celebrated work — this volume, 
reserved for solitary contemplation, should be considered 
as a future relic of ourselves. The late Sir Samuel 
Remilly commenced, even in the most occupied period 
of his life, a diary of his last twelve years : which he 
declares in his will, ** I bequeath to my children, as it 
may be serviceable to them." Perhaps in this Romilly 
bore in mind the example of another eminent lawyer, the 
celebrated TThitelocke. who had drawn up a great work, 
entitled ,; Remembrances of the Labours of TThitelocke, 
in the Annals of his Life, for the Instruction of his Chil- 
dren." That neither of these family books has appeared, 



160 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

is our common loss. Such legacies from such men ought 
to become the inheritance of their countrymen. 

To register the transactions of the day, with observa- 
tions on what, and on whom, he had seen, was the advice 
of Lord Kaimes to the late Mr. Curwen ; and for years his 
head never reached its pillow without performing a task 
which habit had made easy. " Our best and surest road 
to knowledge," said Lord Kaimes, " is by profiting from 
the labours of others, and making their experience our 
own." In this manner Curwen tells us he acquired by 
habit the art of thinking / and he is an able testimony 
of the practicability and success of the plan, for he candid- 
ly tells us, " Though many would sicken at the idea of 
imposing such a task upon themselves, yet the attempt, 
persevered in for a short time, would soon become a cus- 
tom more irksome to omit than it was difficult to com- 
mence." 

Could we look into the libraries of authors, the studios 
of artists, and the laboratories of chemists, and view 
what they have only sketched, or what lie scattered in 
fragments, and could we trace their first and last thoughts, 
we might discover that we have lost more than we possess. 
There we might view foundations without superstructures, 
once the monuments of their hopes ! A living architect 
recently exhibited to the public an extraordinary picture 
of his mind, in his " Architectural Visions of Early Fancy 
in the Gay Morning of Youth," and which now were 
" dreams in the evening of life." In this picture he had 
thrown together all the architectural designs his imagina- 
tion had conceived, but which remained unexecuted. 
The feeling is true, however whimsical such unac- 
complished fancies might appear when thrown together 
into one picture. In literary history such instances have 
occurred but too frequently : the imagination of youth, 
measuring neither time nor ability, creates what neither 
time nor ability can execute. Adam Smith, in the pref- 



THOUGHTS UNEXECUTED. 167 

ace to the first edition of his "Theory of Sentiments," 
announced a large work on law and government ; and in 
a late edition he still repeated the promise, observing 
that " Thirty years ago I entertained no doubt of being 
able to execute everything which it announced." The 
" Wealth of Nations " was but a fragment of this greater 
work. Surely men of genius of all others, may mourn 
over the length of art and the brevity of life ! 

Yet many glorious efforts, and even artificial inventions, 
have been contrived to assist and save its moral and 
literary existence in that perpetual race which genius 
holds with time. We trace its triumph in the studious 
days of such men as Gibbon, Sir William Jones, and 
Priestley. An invention by which the moral qualities 
and the acquisitions of the literary character were com- 
bined and advanced together, is what Sir William Jones 
ingeniously calls his " Andrometer." In that scale of 
human attainments and enjoyments which ought to ac- 
company the eras of human life, it reminds us of what 
was to be learned, and what to be practiced, assigning 
to stated periods their appropriate pursuits. An occa- 
sional recurrence, even to so fanciful a standard, would be 
like looking on a clock to remind the student how he 
loiters, or how he advances in the great day's work. Such 
romantic plans have been often invented by the ardour 
of genius. There was no communication between Sir 
William Jones and Dr. Franklin ; yet, when young, the 
self-taught philosopher of America pursued the same 
genial and generous devotion to his own moral and lit- 
erary excellence. 

" It was about this time I conceived," says Franklin, 
"the bold and arduous project of arriving at moral 
perfection," &c. He began a daily journal, in which 
against thirteen virtues accompanied by seven columns 
to mark the days of the week, he dotted down what he 
considered to be his failures ; he found himself fuller of 



308 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

faults than he had imagined, but at length his blots 
diminished. This self-examination, or this "Faultbook," 
as Lord Shaftesbury would have called it, was always 
earned about him. These books still exist. An ad- 
ditional contrivance was that of journalising his twenty- 
four hours, of which he has furnished us both with de- 
scriptions and specimens of the method; and he closes 
with a solemn assurance, that " It may be well my 
posterity should be informed, that to this little artifice 
their ancestor owes the constant felicity of his life." 
Thus we see the fancy of Jones and the sense of Frank- 
lin, unconnected either by character or communication, 
but acted on by the same glorious feeling to create their 
own moral and literary character, inventing similar al- 
though extraordinary methods. 

The memorials of Gibbon and Priestley present us with 
the experience and the habits of the literary character. 
" What I have known," says Dr. Priestley, " with respect 
to myself, has tended much to lessen both my admiration 
and my contempt of others. Could we have entered 
into the mind of Sir Isaac Xewton, and have traced all 
the steps by which he produced his great works, we 
might see nothing very extraordinary in the process." 
Our student, with an ingenuous simplicity, opens to us 
that " variety of mechanical expedients by which he 
secured and arranged his thoughts," and that discipline 
of the mind, by means of a peculiar arrangement of 
his studies for the day and for the year, in which he rival- 
led the calm and unalterable system pursued by Gibbon, 
Buffon, and Yoltaire, who often only combined the knowl- 
edge they obtained by humble methods. They knew 
what to ask for ; and where what is wanted may be found : 
they made use of an intelligent secretary ; aware, as 
Lord Bacon has expressed it, that some books " may be 
read by deputy." 

Buffon laid down an excellent rule to obtain originality, 



MODES OF STUDY. ± 69 

when he advised the writer first to exhaust his own 
thoughts, before he attempted to consult other writers ; 
and Gibbon, the most experienced reader of all our 
writers, offers the same important advice to an author. 
When engaged on a particular subject, he tells us, "I 
suspended my perusal of any new book on the subject, 
till I had reviewed all that I knew, or believed, or had 
thought on it, that I might be qualified to discern how 
much the authors added to my original stock." The 
advice of Lord Bacon, that we should pursue our studies 
in whatever disposition the mind may be, is excellent. 
If happily disposed, we shall gain a great step ; and if 
indisposed, we " shall work out the knots and strands of 
the mind, and make the middle times- the more pleasant." 
Some active lives have passed away in incessant com- 
petition, like those of Mozart, Cicero, and Voltaire, who 
were restless, perhaps unhappy, when their genius was 
quiescent. To such minds the constant zeal they bring 
to their labour supplies the absence of that inspiration 
which cannot always be the same, nor always at its 
height. 

Industry is the feature by which the ancients so 
frequently describe an eminent character ; such phrases 
as "incredibili industrial ditigentia singulari" are 
usual. We of these days cannot conceive the industry of 
Cicero; but he has himself told us that he suffered no 
moments of his leisure to escape from him. Not only 
his spare hours were consecrated to his books ; but even 
on days of business he would take a few turns in his 
walk, to meditate or to dictate ; many of his letters are 
dated before daylight, some from the senate, at his meals, 
and amid his morning levees. The dawn of day was 
the summons of study to Sir William Jones. John 
Hunter, who was constantly engaged in the search and 
consideration of new facts, described what was passing 
in his mind by a remarkable illustration: — he said to 



170 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

Abcrnethy, " My mind is like a bee-hive." A simile 
which was singularly correct ; " for," observes Abernethy, 
" in the midst of buzz and apparent confusion there was 
great order, regularity of structure, and abundant food, 
collected with incessant industry from the choicest stores 
of nature." Thus one man of genius is the ablest com- 
mentator on the thoughts and feelings of another. When 
we reflect on the magnitude of the labours of Cicero and 
the elder Pliny, on those of Erasmus, Petrarch, Baronius, 
Lord Bacon, Usher, and Bayle, we seem at the base of 
these monuments of study, we seem scarcely awake to 
admire. These were the laborious instructors of mankind ; 
their age has closed. 

Yet let not those other artists of the mind, who work 
in the airy looms of fancy and wit, imagine that they are 
weaving their webs, without the direction of a principle, 
and without a secret habit which they have acquired, and 
which some have imagined, by its quickness and facility, 
to be an instinct. " Habit," says Reid, " differs from 
instinct, not in its nature, but in its origin ; the last being 
natural, the first acquired." What we are accustomed 
to do, gives a facility and proneness to do on like oc- 
casions ; and there may be even an art, unperceived by 
themselves, in opening and pursuing a scene of pure 
invention, and even in the happiest turns of wit. One 
who had all the experience of such an artist has employed 
the very terms we have used, of "mechanical" and 
" habitual." " Be assured," says Goldsmith, " that wit 
is in some measure mechanical; and that a man long 
habituated to catch at even its resemblance, will at last 
be happy enough to possess the substance. By a long 
habit of writing he acquires a justness of thinking, and 
a mastery of manner which holiday writers, even with 
ten times his genius, may vainly attempt to equal." The 
wit of Butler was not extemporaneous, but painfully 
elaborated from notes which he incessantly accumulated ; 



DEEAMS. . 171 

and the familiar rime of Berni, the burlesque poet, his 
existing manuscripts will prove, were produced by per- 
petual re-touches. Even in the sublime efforts of im- 
agination, this art of meditation may be practised ; and 
Alfieri has shown us, that in those energetic tragic dra- 
mas which were often produced in a state of enthusiasm, 
.he pursued a regulated process. "All my tragedies 
have been composed three times ;" and he describes the 
three stages of conception, development, and versifying. 
"After these three operations, I proceed, like other au- 
thors, to publish, correct, or amend." 

" All is habit in mankind, even virtue itself !" exclaimed 
Metastasio; and we may add, even the meditations of 
genius. Some of its boldest conceptions are indeed for- 
tuitous, starting up and vanishing almost in the percep- 
tion; like that giant form, sometimes seen amidst the 
glaciers, afar from the opposite traveller, moving as he 
moves, stopping as he stops, yet, in a moment lost, and 
perhaps never more seen, although but his own reflection ! 
Often in the still obscurity of the night, the ideas, the 
studies, the whole history of the day, is acted over 
again. There are probably few mathematicians who 
have not dreamed of an interesting problem, observes 
Professor Dugald Stewart. In these vivid scenes we 
are often so completely converted into spectators, that 
a great poetical contemporary of our country thinks that 
even his dreams should not pass away unnoticed, and 
keeps what he calls a register of nocturnals. Tasso 
has recorded some of his poetical dreams, which were 
often disturbed by waking himself in repeating a verse 
aloud. "This night I awaked with this verse in my 
mouth — 

E i duo che tnanda il nero adusto suolo. 

The two, the dark and burning soil has sent." 

He discovered that the epithet black was not suitable; 



172 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

"I again fell asleep, and in a dream I read in Strabo 
lhat the sand of Ethiopia and Arabia is extremely ichite, 
and this morning I have found the place. You see what 
learned dreams I have." 

But incidents of this nature are not peculiar to this 
great bard. The improvvisatori poets, we are told, can- 
not sleep after an evening's effusion ; the rhymes are still 
ringing in their ears, and imagination, if they have any, 
will still haunt them. Their previous state of excitement- 
breaks into the calm of sleep ; for, like the ocean, when 
its swell is subsiding, the waves still heave and beat. 
A poet, whether a Milton or a Blackmore, will ever find 
that his muse will visit his "slumbers nightly." His 
fate is much harder than that of the great minister, Sir 
Robert Walpole, who on retiring to rest could throw 
aside his political intrigues with his clothes; but Sir 
Robert, to judge by his portrait and anecdotes of him, 
had a sleekiness and good-humour, and an unalterable 
equanimity of countenance, not the portion of men of 
genius : indeed one of these has regretted that his sleep 
was so profound as not to be interrupted by dreams; 
from a throng of fantastic ideas he imagined that he 
could have drawn new sources of poetic imagery. The 
historian De Thou was one of those great literary char- 
acters who, all his life, was preparing to write the history 
which he afterwards composed ; omitting nothing, in his 
travels and hir embassies, which went to the formation of 
a great man. De Thou has given a very curious account 
of his dreams. Such was his passion for study, and his 
ardent admiration of the great men whom he conversed 
with, that he often imagined in his sleep that he was 
travelling in Italy, Germany, and in England, where he 
saw and consulted the learned, and examined their curious 
libraries. He had all his lifetime these literary dreams, 
but more particularly in his travels they reflected these 
images of the day. 



VALUE OF MEDITATION*. 173 

If memory do not chain down these hurrying fading 
children of the imagination, and 

Snatch, the faithless fugitives to light 

with the beams of the morning, the mind suddenly finds 
itself forsaken and solitary.* Rousseau has uttered a com- 
plaint on this occasion. Full of enthusiasm, he devoted 
to the subject of his thoughts, as was his custom, the 
long sleepless intervals of his nights. Meditating in 
bed with his eyes closed, he turned over his periods in a 
tumult of ideas ; but when he rose and had dressed, all 
was vanished ; and when he sat down to his breakfast he 
had nothing to write. Thus genius has its vespers and 
its vigils, as well as its matins, which we have been so 
often told are the true hours of its inspiration; but 
every hour may be full of inspiration for him who knows 
to meditate. No man was more practised in this art of 
the mind than Pope, and even the night was not an 
unregarded portion of his poetical existence, not less 
than with Leonardo da Vinci, who tells us how often he 
found the use of recollecting the ideas of what he had 
considered in the day after he had retired to bed, encom- 
passed by the silence and obscurity of the night. Sleep- 
less nights are the portion of genius when engaged in 
its work ; the train of reasoning is still pursued ; the 
images of fancy catch a fresh illumination ; and even a 
happy expression shall linger in the ear of him who 
turns about for the soft composure to which his troubled 
spirit cannot settle. 

But while with genius so much seems fortuitous, in its 
great operations the march of the mind appears regular, 

* One of the most extraordinary instances of inspiration in dreams 
is told of Tartini, the Italian musician, whose "Devil's Sonata" is 
well known to musicians. He dreamed that the father of evil played 
this piece to him, and upon waking he put it on paper. It is a strange 
wild performance, possessing great originality and vigour. — Ed. 



174 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

and requires preparation. The intellectual faculties are 
not always co-existent, or do not always act simultane- 
ously. Whenever any particular faculty is highly active, 
while the others are languid, the work, as a work of 
genius, may be very deficient. Hence the faculties, in 
whatever degree they exist, are unquestionably enlarged 
by meditation. It seems trivial to observe that medita- 
tion should precede composition, but we are not always 
aware of its importance ; the truth is, that it is a diffi- 
culty unless it be a habit. We write, and we find we 
have written ill ; we re-write, and feel we have written 
well : in the second act of composition we have acquired 
the necessary meditation. Still we rarely carry on our 
meditation so far as its practice would enable us. Many 
works of mediocrity might have approached to excellence, 
had this art of the mind been exercised. Many volatile 
writers might have reached even to deep thinking, had 
they bestowed a day of meditation before a day of com- 
position, and thus engendered their thoughts. Many 
productions of genius have originally been enveloped in 
feebleness and obscurity, which have only been brought 
to perfection by repeated acts of the mind. There is a 
maxim of Confucius, which in the translation seems 
quaint, but which is pregnant with sense — 

Labour, but slight not meditation ; 
Meditate, but slight not labour: 

Few works of magnitude presented themselves at once, 
in their extent and with their associations, to their 
authors. Two or three striking circumstances, unob- 
served before, are perhaps all which the man of genius 
perceives. It is in revolving the subject that the whole 
mind becomes gradually agitated ; as a summer land- 
scape, at the break of day, is wrapped in mist : at first, 
the sun strikes on a single object, but the light and 
warmth increasing, the whole scene glows in the noonday 



VALUE OF MEDITATION. 175 

of imagination. How beautifully this state of the mind, 
in the progress of composition, is described by Dryden, 
alluding to his work, " when it was only a confused mass 
of thoughts, tumbling over one another in the dark ; 
when the fancy was yet in its first work, moving the 
sleeping images of things towards the light, there to be 
distinguished, and then either to be chosen or rejected 
by the judgment !" At that moment, he adds, " I was in 
that eagerness of imagination which, by over-pleasing 
fanciful men, flatters them into the danger of writing." 
Gibbon tells us of his history, " At the onset all was 
dark and doubtful ; even the title of the work, the true 
era of the decline and fall of the empire, &c. I was 
often tempted to cast away the labour of seven years." 
Winckelmann was long lost in composing his " History 
of Art ;" a hundred fruitless attempts were made, before 
he could discover a plan amidst the labyrinth. Slight 
conceptions kindle finished works. A lady asking for a 
few verses on rural topics of the Abbe de Lille, his 
specimens pleased, and sketches heaped on sketches pro- 
duced "Les Jardins." In writing the "Pleasures of 
Memory," as it happened with " The Rape of the Lock," 
the poet at first proposed a simple description in a few 
lines, till conducted by meditation the perfect composi- 
tion of several years closed in that fine poem. That 
still valuable work JO Art de JPenser of the Port-Royal, 
was originally projected to teach a young nobleman all 
that was practically useful in the art of logic in a few 
days, and was intended to have been written in one 
morning by the great Arnauld ; but to that profound 
thinker so many new ideas crowded in that slight task, 
that he was compelled to call in his friend Mcolle ; and 
thus a few projected pages closed in a volume so ex- 
cellent, that our elegant metaphysician has recently de- 
clared, that " it is hardly possible to estimate the merits 
too highly." Pemberton, who knew Newton intimately, 



176 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

informs us that his Treatise on Natural Philosophy, full 
of a variety of profound inventions, was composed by 
him from scarcely any other materials than the few 
'propositions he had set down several years before, and 
which having resumed, occupied him in writing one 
year and a half. A carious circumstance has been pre- 
served in the life of the other immortal man in phi- 
losophy, Lord Bacon. "When young, he wrote a letter to 
Father Fulgentio concerning an Essay of his, to which 
he gave the title of " The Greatest Birth of Time," a 
title which he censures as too pompous. The Essay 
itself is lost, but it was the first outline of that great 
design which he afterwards pursued and finished in his 
" Instauration of the Sciences." Locke himself has in- 
formed us, that his great work on " The Human Under- 
standing," when he first put pen to paper, he thought 
" would have been contained in one sheet, but that the 
farther he went on, the larger prospect he had." In this 
manner it would be beautiful to trace the history of the 
human mind, and observe how a Newton and a Bacon 
and a Locke were proceeding for thirty years together, 
in accumulating truth upon truth, and finally building 
up these fabrics of their invention. 

Were it possible to collect some thoughts of great 
thinkers, which were never written, we should discover 
vivid conceptions, and an originality they never dared to 
pursue in their works ! Artists have this advantage over 
uuthors, that their virgin fancies, their chance felicities, 
which labour cannot afterwards produce, are constantly 
perpetuated ; and those " studies," as they are called, are 
as precious to posterity as their more complete designs. In 
literature we possess one remarkable evidence of these 
fortuitous thoughts of genius. Pope and Swift, being in 
the country together, observed, that if contemplative 
men were to notice "the thoughts which suddenly 
present themselves to their minds when walking in the 



FIRST THOUGHTS. 177 

fields, &c., they might find many as well worth preserv- 
ing as some of their more deliberate reflections." They 
made a trial, and agreed to write down such involuntary 
thoughts as occurred during their stay there. These 
furnished out the "Thoughts" in Pope's and Swift's 
Miscellanies.* Among Lord Bacon's Remains, we find a 
paper entitled " Sudden Thoughts, set down for Profit." 
At all hours, by the side of Voltaire's bed, or on his 
table, stood his pen and ink with slips of paper. The 
margins of his books were covered with his " sudden 
thoughts." Cicero, in reading, constantly took notes 
and made comments. There is an art of reading, as well 
as an art of thinking, and an art of writing. 

The art of meditation may be exercised at all hours, 
and in all places ; and men of genius, in their walks, at 
table, and amidst assemblies, turning the eye of the mind 
inwards, can form an artificial solitude ; retired amidst a 
crowd, calm amidst distraction, and wise amidst folly. 
When Domenichino was reproached for his dilatory 
habits, in not finishing a great picture for which he had 
contracted, his reply described this method of study : 
Eh ! To la sto continuamente dipingendo entro di me — I 
am continually painting it within myself. Hogarth, with 
an eye always awake to the ridiculous, would catch a 
character on his thumb-nail. Leonardo da Yinci has left 
a great number of little books which he usually carried 
in his girdle, that he might instantly sketch whatever he 
wished to recal to his recollection ; and Amoretti dis- 
covered, that, in these light sketches, this fine genius 
was forming a system of physiognomy which he 
frequently inculcated to his pupils, f Haydn carefully 

* This anecdote is found in Ruff head's "Jnfe of Pope," evidently 
given by "Warburton, as was everything of personal knowledge in that 
tasteless volume of a mere lawyer, who presumed to write the life of a 
poet 

f A collection of sixty-four of these sketches were published at 
12 



178 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

noted down in a pocket-book the passages and ideas 
which came to him in his walks or amid company. Some 
of the great actions of men of this habit of mind were 
first meditated on amidst the noise of a convivial party, 
or the music of a concert. The victory of Waterloo 
might have been organized in the ball-room at Brussels : 
and thus Rodney, at the table of Lord Sandwich, while 
the bottle was briskly circulating, being observed ar- 
ranging bits of cork, and his solitary amusement having 
excited inquiry, said that he was practising a plan to 
annihilate an enemy's fleet. This proved to be that 
discovery of breaking the line, which the happy audacity 
of the hero afterwards executed. What situation is 
more common than a sea-voyage, where nothing presents 
itself to the reflections of most men than irksome observa- 
tions on the desert of waters ? But the constant exercise 
of the mind by habitual practice is the privilege of a 
commanding genius, and, in a similar situation, we 
discover Cicero and Sir William Jones acting alike. 
Amidst the Oriental seas, in a voyage of 12,000 miles, 
the mind of Jones kindled with delightful enthusiasm, 
and he has perpetuated those elevating feelings in his 
discourse to the Asiatic Society ; so Cicero on board a 
ship, sailing slowly along the coast, passing by a town 
where his friend Trebatius resided, wrote a work which 
the other had expressed a wish to possess, and of which 
wish the view of the town had reminded him. 

To this habit of continuity of attention, tracing 
the first simple idea to its remoter consequences, 
the philosophical genius owes many of its discoveries. 
It was one evening in the cathedral of Pisa that Galileo 
observed the vibrations of a brass lustre pendent from 
the vaulted roof, which had been left swinging by one of 

Paris in IT 30. They are remarkable as delineations of mental 
character in feature as strongly felt as if done under the direction of 
Lavater himself. — Ed. 



GREAT DISCOVERIES. 179 

the vergers. The habitual meditation of genius com- 
bined with an ordinary accident a new idea of science, 
and hence conceived the invention of measuring time by 
the medium of a pendulum. Who but a genius of this 
order, sitting in his orchard, and observing the descent of 
an apple, could have discovered a new quality in matter, 
and have ascertained the laws of attraction, by perceiv- 
ing that the same causes might perpetuate the regular 
motions of the planetary system ; who but a genius of 
this order, while viewing boys blowing soap-bladders, 
could have discovered the properties of light and colours, 
and then anatomised a ray? Franklin, on board a 
ship, observing a partial stillness in the waves when they 
threw down water which had been used for -culinary 
purposes, by the same principles of meditation was led 
to the discovery of the wonderful property in oil of 
calming the agitated ocean ; and many a ship has been 
preserved in tempestuous weather, or a landing facili- 
tated on a dangerous surf, by this solitary meditation 
of genius. 

Thus meditation draws out of the most simple truths 
the strictness of philosophical demonstration, convert- 
ing even the amusements of school-boys, or the most 
ordinary domestic occurrences, into the principle of a 
new science. The phenomenon of galvanism was fa- 
miliar to students ; yet was there but one man of genius 
who could take advantage of an accident, give it his 
name, and fix it as a science. It was while lying in his 
bath, but still meditating on the means to detect the 
fraud of the goldsmith who had made Hiero's crown, 
that the most extraordinary philosopher of antiquity 
was led to the investigation of a series of propositions 
demonstrated in the two books of Archimedes, De insi- 
dentibus injluido, still extant ; and which a great mathe- 
matician admires both for the strictness and elegance of 
the demonstrations. To as minute a domestic occurrence 



180 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

as Galvani's we owe the steam-en sine. When the Mar- 
quis of Worcester was a State prisoner in the Tower, he 
one day observed, while his meal was preparing in his 
apartment, that the cover of the vessel being tight, was, 
by the expansion of the steam, suddenly forced off, and 
driven up the chimney. His inventive mind was led on 
in a train of thought with reference to the practical ap- 
plication of steam as a first mover. His observations, 
obscurely exhibited in his "Century of Inventions," 
were successively wrought out by the meditations of 
others, and an incident, to which one can hardly make 
a formal reference without a risible emotion, terminated 
in the noblest instance of mechanical power. 

Into the stillness of meditation the mind of genius 
must be frequently thrown ; it is a kind of darkness 
which hides from us all surrounding objects, even in the 
light of day. This is the first state of existence in genius. 
In Cicero's " Treatise on Old Age," we find Cato admir- 
ing Caius Sulpitius Gallus, who, when he sat down to 
write in the morning, was surprised by the evening; 
and when he took up his pen in the evening, was sur- 
prised by the appearance of the morning. Socrates 
sometimes remained a whole day in immovable medita- 
tion, his eyes and countenance directed to one spot, as if 
in the stillness of death. La Fontaine, when writing his 
comic tales, has been observed early in the morning and 
late in the evening in the same recumbent posture under 
the same tree. This quiescent state is a sort of enthu- 
siasm, and renders everything that surrounds us as dis- 
tant as if an immense interval separated us from the 
scene. Poggius has told us of Dante, that he indulged 
his meditations more strongly than any man he knew ; 
for when deeply busied in reading, he seemed to live 
only in his ideas. Once the poet went to view a public 
procession; having entered a bookseller's shop, and taken 
up a book, he sunk into a reverie ; on his return he de- 



ABSTRACTION OF MIND. 181 

clared that he had neither seen nor heard a single occur- 
rence in the public exhibition, which had passed un- 
observed before him. It has been told of a modern as- 
tronomer, that one summer night, when he was with- 
drawing to his chamber, the brightness of the heavens 
showed a phenomenon: he passed the whole night in 
observing it ; and when they came to him early in the 
morning, and found him in the same attitude, he said, 
like one who had been recollecting his thoughts for a 
few moments, " It must be thus ; but I'll go to bed be- 
fore it is late." He had gazed the entire night in medita- 
tion, and was not aware of it. Abemethy has finely 
painted the situation of Newton in this state of mind. 
I will not change his words, for his words are his feelings. 
" It was this power of mind — which can contemplate 
the greatest number of facts or propositions with ac- 
curacy — that so eminently distinguished Newton from 
other men. It was this power that enabled him to ar- 
range the whole of a treatise in his thoughts before he 
committed a single idea to paper. In the exercise of 
this power, he was known occasionally to have passed 
a whole night or day, entirely inattentive to surround- 
ing objects." 

There is nothing incredible in the stories related of 
some who have experienced this entranced state in study, 
where the mind, deliciously inebriated with the object it 
contemplates, feels nothing, from the excess of feeling, as 
a philosopher well describes it. The impressions from 
our exterior sensations are often suspended by great 
mental excitement. Archimedes, involved in the investiga- 
tion of mathematical truth, and the painters Protogenes 
and Parmegiano, found their senses locked up as it were 
in meditation, so as to be incapable of withdrawing 
themselves from their work, even in the midst of the 
terrors and storming of the place by the enemy. Marino 
was so absorbed in the composition of his " Adonis," 



182 LITERARY CHARACTER 

that he suffered his leg to be burned before the painful 
sensation grew stronger than the intellectual pleasure of 
his imagination. Monsieur Thomas, a modern French 
writer, and an intense thinker, would sit for hours 
against a hedge, composing with a low voice, taking the 
same pinch of snuff for half an hour together without 
being aware that it had long disappeared. When he 
quitted his apartment, after prolonging his studies there, 
a visible alteration was observed in his person, and the 
agitation of his recent thoughts was still traced in his 
air and manner. With eloquent truth Buffon described 
those reveries of the student, which compress his day, 
and mark the hours by the sensations of minutes ! " In- 
vention depends on patience : contemplate your subject 
long ; it will gradually unfold till a sort of electric spark 
convulses for a moment the brain, and spreads down to 
the very heart a glow of irritation. Then come the 
luxuries of genius, the true hours for production and 
composition — hours so delightful, that I have spent 
twelve or fourteen successively at my writing-desk, and 
still been in a state of pleasure." Bishop Home, whose 
literary feelings were of the most delicate and lively 
kind, has beautifully recorded them in his progress 
through a favourite and lengthened work — his Com- 
mentary on the Psalms. He alludes to himself in the 
third person ; yet who but the self-painter could have 
caught those delicious emotions which are so evanescent 
in the deep occupation of pleasant studies ? " He arose 
fresh in the morning to his task ; the silence of the night 
invited him to pursue it ; and he can truly say, that 
food and rest were not preferred before it. Every part 
improved infinitely upon his acquaintance with it, and no 
one gave him uneasiness but the last, for then he grieved 
that his work was done." 

This eager delight of pursuing study, this impatience 
of interruption, and this exultation in progress, are alike 



ENTHUSIASM OF GENIUS. 183 

finely described by Milton in a letter to his friend 
Diodati. 

" Such is the character of my mind, that no delay, 
none of the ordinary cessations for rest or otherwise, 
I had nearly said care or thinking of the very subject, 
can hold me back from being hurried on to the destined 
point, and from completing the great circuit, as it were, 
of the study in which I am engaged." 

Such is the picture of genius viewed in the stillness of 
meditation ; but there is yet a more excited state, when, 
as if consciousness were mixing with its reveries, in the 
allusion of a scene, of a person, of a passion, the emotions 
of the soul affect even the .organs of sense. This excite- 
ment is experienced when the poet in the excellence of 
invention, and the philosopher in the force of intellect, 
alike share in the hours of inspiration and the enthusiasm 
of genius. 



CHAPTER XII. 

The enthusiasm of genius. — A state of mind resembling a waking 
dream distinct from reverie. — The ideal presence distinguished from 
the real presence. — The senses are really affected in the ideal world 
proved by a variety of instances. — Of the rapture or sensation of 
deep study in art, in science, and literature. — Of perturbed feelings 
in delirium. — In extreme endurance of attention. — And in visionary 
illusions. — Enthusiasts in literature and art — of their self-immola- 
tions. 

WE left the man of genius in the stillness of medita- 
tion. We have now to pursue his history through 
that more excited state which occurs in the most active 
operations of genius, and which the term reverie inade- 
quately indicates. Metaphysical distinctions but ill de- 
scribe it, and popular language affords no terms for those 



184 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

faculties and feelings which escape the observation of the 
multitude not affected by the phenomenon. 

The illusion produced by a drama on persons of great 
sensibility, when all the senses are awakened by a mix- 
ture of reality with imagination, is the effect experienced 
by men of genius in their own vivified ideal world. 
Real emotions are raised by fiction. In a scene, ap- 
parently passing in their presence, where the whole train 
of circumstances succeeds in all the continuity of nature, 
and where a sort of real existences appear to rise up 
before them, they themselves become spectators or 
actors. Their sympathies are excited, and the exterior 
organs of sense are visibly affected — they even break 
out into speech, and often accompany their speech with 
gestures. 

In this equivocal state the enthusiast of genius pro- 
duces his masterpieces. This waking dream is distinct 
from reverie, where, our thoughts wandering without 
connexion, the faint impressions are so evanescent as to 
occur without even being recollected. A day of reverie 
is beautifully painted by Rousseau as distinct from a day 
of thinking : " J'ai des journees delicieuses, errant sans 
souci, sans projet, sans affaire, de bois en bois, et de 
rocher en rocher, revant tovjoitrs et ne pensa?it point" 
Far different, however, is one closely-pursued act of 
meditation, carrying the enthusiast of genius beyond the 
precinct of actual existence. The act of contemplation 
then creates the thing contemplated. He is now the 
busy actor in a world which he himself only views; 
alone, he hears, he sees, he touches, he laughs, he weeps ; 
his brows and lips, and his very limbs move. 

Poets and even painters, who, as Lord Bacon describes 
■witches, "are imaginative," have often involuntarily 
betrayed, in the act of composition, those gestures which 
accompany this enthusiasm. Witness Domenichino en- 
raging himself that he might portray anger. Xor were 



ACTORS OF GENIUS. 185 

these creative gestures quite unknown to Quintilian, who 
has nobly compared them to the lashings of the lion's 
tail, rousing him to combat. Actors of genius have ac- 
customed themselves to walk on the stage for an hour 
before the curtain was drawn, that they might fill their 
minds with all the phantoms of the drama, and so sus- 
pend all communion with the external world. The great 
actress of our age, during representation, always had 
the door of her dressing-room open, that she might listen 
to, and if possible watch the whole performance, with 
the same attention as was experienced by the spectators. 
By this means she possessed herself of all the illusion 
of the scene ; and when she herself entered on the stage, 
her dreaming thoughts then brightened into a vision, 
where the perceptions of the soul were as firm and clear 
as if she were really the Constance or the Katherine 
whom she only represented.* 

Aware of this peculiar faculty, so prevalent in the more 
vivid exercise of genius, Lord Kaimes seems to have 
been the first who, in a work on criticism, attempted to 
name the ideal presence, to distinguish it from the real 
presence of things. It has been called the representative 
faculty, the imaginative state, and many other states 
and faculties. Call it what we will, no term opens to us 
the invisible mode of its operations, no metaphysical 
definition expresses its variable nature. Conscious of 
the existence of such a faculty, our critic perceived that 
the conception of it is by no means clear when described 
in words. 

Has not the difference between an actual thing, and its 
image in a glass, perplexed some philosophers ? and it is 
well known how far the ideal philosophy has been car- 
ried bv so fine a genius as Bishop Berkeley. " All are 
pictures, alike painted on the retina, or optical sen- 

* The late Mrs. Siddons. She herself communicated this striking 
circumstance to me. 



186 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

Borium !" exclaimed the enthusiast Barry, who only saw 
pictures in nature, and nature in pictures. This faculty 
has had a strange influence over the passionate lovers of 
statues. We find unquestionable evidence of the vivid- 
ness of the representative faculty, or the ideal presence, 
vying with that of reality. Evelyn has described one of 
this cast of mind, in the librarian of the Vatican, who 
haunted one of the finest collections at Rome. To these 
statues he would frequently talk as if they were living 
persons, often kissing and embracing them. A similar 
circumstance mi^ht be recorded of a man of distinguished 
talent and literature among ourselves. Wondrous stories 
are told of the amatorial passion for marble statues ; but 
the wonder ceases, and the truth is established, when the 
irresistible ideal presence is comprehended; the visions 
which now bless these lovers of statues, in the modern 
land of sculpture, Italy, had acted with equal force in an- 
cient Greece. "The Last Judgment," the stupendous 
ideal presence of Michael Angelo, seems to have com- 
municated itself to some of his beholders : " As I stood 
before this picture," a late traveller tells us, " my blood 
chilled as if- the reality were before me, and the very 
sound of the trumpet seemed to pierce my ears." 

Cold and barren tempers without imagination, whose 
impressions of objects never rise beyond those of mem- 
ory and reflection, which know only to compare, and not 
to excite, will smile at this equivocal state of the ideal 
presence ; yet it is a real one to the enthusiast of genius, 
and it is his happiest and peculiar condition. Destitute 
of this faculty, no metaphysical aid, no art to be taught 
him, no mastery of talent, will avail him : unblest with 
it, the votary will find each sacrifice lying cold on 
the altar, for no accepting flame from heaven shall kin- 
dle it. 

This enthusiasm indeed can only be discovered by men 
of genius themselves ; yet when most under its influence, 



SENSITIVENESS. 187 

they can least perceive it, as the eye which sees all things 
cannot view itself; or, rather, such an attempt would be 
like searching for the principle of life, which were it found 
would cease to be life. From an enchanted man we 
must not expect a narrative of his enchantment ; for if 
he could speak to us reasonably, and like one of our- 
selves, in that case he would be a man in a state of dis- 
enchantment, and then would perhaps yield us no better 
account than we may trace by our own observations. 

There is, however, something of reality in this state of 
the ideal presence ; for the most familiar instances will 
show how the nerves of each external sense are put in 
motion by the idea of the object, as if the real object had 
been presented to it. The difference is only in the de- 
gree. The senses are more concerned in the ideal world 
than at first appears. The idea of a thing will make us 
shudder ; and the bare imagination of it will often pro- 
duce a real pain. A curious consequence may be deduced 
from this principle; Milton, lingering amid the fresh- 
ness of nature in Eden, felt all the delights of those ele- 
ments which he was creating ; his nerves moved with the 
images which excited them. The fierce and wild Dante, 
amidst the abysses of his "Inferno," must often have 
been startled by its horrors, and often left his bitter and 
gloomy spirit in the stings he inflicted on the great 
criminal. The moveable nerves, then, of the man of 
genius are a reality ; he sees, he hears, he feels, by each. 
How mysterious to us is the operation of this faculty ! 

A Homer and a Richardson,* like nature, open a vol- 
ume large as life itself — embracing a circuit of human 
existence ! This state of the mind has even a reality in 

* Richardson assembles a family about him, writing down what 
they said, seeing their very manner of saying, living with them as 
often and as long as he wills — with such a personal unity, that an in- 
genious lawyer once told me that he required no stronger evidence of 
a fact in any court of law than a circumstantial scene in Richardson. 



183 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

it for the generality of persons. In a romance or a drama, 
tears are often seen in the eyes of the reader or the spec- 
tator, who, "before they have time to recollect that the 
whole is fictitious, have been surprised for a moment by 
a strong conception of a present and existing scene. 

Can we doubt of the reality of this faculty, when the 
visible and outward frame of the man of genius bears 
witness to its presence ? When Fielding said, " I do not 
doubt but the most pathetic and affecting scenes have 
been writ with tears," he probably drew that discovery 
from an inverse feeling to his own. Fielding would have 
been gratified to have confirmed the observation by facts 
which never reached him. Metastasio, in writing the 
ninth scene of the second act of his Olympiad, found 
himself suddenly moved — shedding tears. The imagined 
sorrows had inspired real tears; and they afterwards 
proved contagious. Had our poet not perpetuated his 
surprise by an interesting sonnet, the circumstance had 
passed away with the emotion, as many such have. Pope 
could never read Priam's speech for the loss of his son 
without tears, and frequently has been observed to weep 
over tender and melancholy passages. Alfieri, the most 
energetic poet of modern times, having composed, with- 
out a pause, the whole of an act, noted in the margin — 
" Written under a paroxysm of enthusiasm, and while 
shedding a flood of tears." The impressions which the 
frame experiences in this state, leave deeper traces behind 
them than those of reverie. A circumstance accidentally 
preserved has informed us of the tremors of Dryden after 
having written that ode,* which, as he confessed, he had 
pursued without the power of quitting it ; but these tre- 
mors were not unusual with him — for in the preface to his 

* This famous and unparalleled ode was probably afterwards re- 
touched; but Joseph Warton discovered in it the rapidity of the 
thoughts, and the glow and the expressiveness of the images; which 
are the certain marks of the first skttch cf a master. 



EFFECT OF GREAT "WORKS. 189 

" Tales," he tell us, that " in translating Homer he found 
greater pleasure than in Yirgil ; hut it was not a pleasure 
without pain ; the continual agitation of the spirits must 
needs be a weakener to any constitution, especially in age, 
and many pauses are required for refreshment betwixt the 
heats." 

We find Metastasio, like others of the brotherhood, 
susceptible of this state, complaining of his sufferings 
during the poetical sestus. " When I apply with atten- 
tion, the nerves of my sensorium are put into a violent 
tumult ; I grow as red as a drunkard, and am obliged to 
quit my work." When Buffon was absorbed on a subject 
which presented great objections to his opinions, he felt 
his head burn, and saw his countenance flushed ; and this 
was a warning for him to suspend his attention. Gray 
could never compose voluntarily: his genius resembled 
the armed apparition in Shakspeare's master-tragedy. 
" He would not be commanded." When he wished to 
compose the Installation Ode, for a considerable time he 
felt himself without the power to begin it : a friend call- 
ing on him, Gray flung open his door hastily, and in a 
hurried voice and tone, exclaiming in the first verse of 
that ode — 

Hence, avaunt ! 'tis holy ground ! — 

his friend started at the disordered appearance of the 
bard, whose orgasm had disturbed his very air and coun- 
tenance. 

Listen to one labouring with all the magic of the spell. 
Madame Roland has thus powerfully described the ideal 
presence in her first readings of Telemachus and Tasso : — 
"My respiration rose, I felt a rapid fire colouring my 
face, and my voice changing had betrayed my agitation. 
I was Eucharis for Telemachus, and Erminia for Tancred. 
However, during this perfect transformation, I did not 
yet think that I myself was anything, for any one : the 



190 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

whole had no connexion with myself. I sought for noth- 
ing around me; I was they; I saw only the objects 
which existed for them ; it was a dream, without being 
awakened." 

The description which so calm and exquisite an investi- 
gator of taste and philosophy as our sweet and polished 
Reynolds has given of himself at one of these moments, 
is too rare not to be recorded in his own words. Allud- 
ing to the famous " Transfiguration," our own Raffaelle 
says — " When I have stood looking at that picture from 
figure to figure, the eagerness, the spirit, the close un- 
affected attention of each figure to the principal action, 
my thoughts have carried me away, that I have forgot 
myself; and for that time might be looked upon as an 
enthusiastic madman ; for I could really fancy the whole 
action was passing before my eyes." 

The effect which the study of Plutarch's Illustrious 
Men produced on the mighty mind of Alfieri, during a 
whole winter, while he lived as it were among the heroes 
of antiquity, he has himself described. Alfieri wept and 
raved with grief and indignation that he was born under 
a government which favoured no Roman heroes and 
sages. As often as he was struck with the great deeds 
of these great men, in his extreme agitation he rose from 
his seat as one possessed. The feeling i of genius in 
Alfieri was suppressed for more than twenty years, by 
the discouragement of his uncle: but as the natural 
temperament cannot be crushed out of the soul of genius, 
he was a poet without writing a single verse ; and as a 
great poet, the ideal presence at times became ungovern- 
able, verging to madness. In traversing the wilds of 
Arragon, his emotions would certainly have given birth 
to poetry, could he have expressed himself in verse. It 
was a complete state of the imaginative existence, or this 
ideal presence; for he proceeded along the wilds of 
Arragon in a reverie, weeping and laughing by turns. 



EFFECTS OF GREAT WORKS. 191 

He considered this as a folly, because it ended in nothing 
but in laughter and tears. He was not aware that he 
was then yielding to a demonstration, could he have 
judged of himself, that he possessed those dispositions 
of mind and that energy of passion which form the 
poetical character. 

Genius creates by a single conception; the statuary 
conceives the statue at once, which he afterwards exe- 
cutes by the slow process of art ; and the architect con- 
trives a whole palace in an instant. In a single principle, 
opening as it were on a sudden to genius, a great and 
new system of things is discovered. It has happened, 
sometimes, that this single conception, rushing over the 
whole concentrated spirit, has agitated the frame convul- 
sively. It comes like a whispered secret from Nature. 
When Malebranche first took up Descartes's Treatise on 
Man, the germ of his own subsequent philosophic system, 
such was his intense feeling, that a violent palpitation of 
the heart, more than once, obliged him to lay down the 
volume. When the first idea of the " Essay on the Arts 
and Sciences " rushed on the mind of Rousseau, a feverish 
symptom in his nervous system approached to a slight 
delirium. Stopping under an oak, he wrote with a pencil 
the Prosopopeia of Fabricius. "I still remember my 
solitary transport at the discovery of a philosophical 
argument against the doctrine of transubstantiation," 
exclaimed Gibbon in his Memoirs. 

This quick sensibility of genius has suppressed the 
voice of poets in reciting their most pathetic passages. 
Thomson was so oppressed by a passage in Virgil or 
Milton when he attempted to read, that " his voice sunk 
in ill-articulated sounds from the bottom of his breast." 
The tremulous figures of the ancient Sibyl appear to 
have been viewed in the land of the Muses, by the ener- 
getic description which Paulus Jovius gives us of the 
impetus and afflatus of one of the Italian improvvisatori, 



192 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

some of whom, I have heard from one present at a 
similar exhibition, have not degenerated in poetic inspi- 
ration, nor in its corporeal excitement. " His eyes fixed 
downwards, kindle as he gives utterance to his effusions, 
the moist drops flow down his cheeks, the veins of his 
forehead swell, and wonderfully his learned ear, as it 
were, abstracted and intent, moderates each impulse of 
his flowing numbers." * 

This enthusiasm throws the man of genius amid Nature 
into absorbing reveries when the senses of other men are 
overcome at the appearance of destruction ; he continues 
to view only Nature herself. The mind of Pliny, to add 
one more chapter to his mighty scroll, sought Nature 
amidst the volcano in which he perished. Vernet was 
on board a ship in a raging tempest where all hope was 
given up. The astonished captain beheld the artist of 
genius, his pencil in his hand, in calm enthusiasm sketch- 
ing the terrible world of waters — studying the wave 
that was rising to devour him.f 

There is a tender enthusiasm in the elevated studies 
of antiquity. Then the ideal presence or the imaginative 
existence prevails, by its perpetual associations, or as the 
late Dr. Brown has, perhaps, more distinctly termed them, 
suggestions. "In contemplating antiquity, the mind 
itself becomes antique," was finely observed by Livy, 
long ere our philosophy of the mind existed as a system. 
This rapture, or sensation of deep study, has been de- 
scribed by one whose imagination had strayed into the 
occult learning of antiquity, and in the hymns of Or- 

* The passage is curious: — Canenti defixi exardent oculi, sudores 
manant, frontis venae contumescunt, et quod mirum est, eruditae aures, 
tanquam alienae et intentae, omnem impetum profluentium numerorum 
exactissima ratione moderantur." 

f Vernet was the artist whose sea-ports of France still decorate the 
Louvre. He was marine painter to Louis XV. and grandfather of the 
celebrated Horace Vernet, whose recent death has deprived France of 
her best painter of battle-scenes. — Ed. 



ENTHUSIASM. 193 

pheus it seemed to him that he had lifted the veil from 
Nature. His feelings were associated with her loneli- 
ness. I translate his words : — " When I took these dark 
mystical hymns into my hands, I appeared as it were to 
be descending into an abyss of the mysteries of venera- 
ble antiquity ; at that moment, the world in silence and 
the stars and moon only, watching me." This enthusi- 
asm is confirmed by Mr. Mathias, who applies this de- 
scription to his own emotions on his first opening the 
manuscript volumes of the poet Gray on the philosophy 
of Plato ; " and many a learned man," he adds, " will 
acknowledge as his own the feelings of this animated 
scholar." 

Amidst the monuments of great and departed nations, 
our imagination is touched by the grandeur of local 
impressions, and the vivid associations, or suggestions, 
of the manners, the arts, and the individuals, of a great 
people. The classical author of Anacharsis, when in 
Italy, would often stop as if overcome by his recollec- 
tions. Amid camps, temples, circuses, hippodromes, and 
public and private edifices, he, as it were, held an interior 
converse with the manes of those who seemed hovering 
about the capital of the old world ; as if he had been a 
citizen of ancient Rome travelling in the modern. So 
men of genius have roved amid the awful ruins till the 
ideal presence has fondly built up the city anew, and 
have become Romans in the Rome of two thousand 
years past. Pomponius Lsetus, who devoted his life to 
this study, was constantly seen wandering amidst the 
vestiges of this " throne of the world." There, in many 
a reverie, as his eyes rested on the mutilated arch 
and the broken column, abstracted and immovable, he 
dropped tears in the ideal presence of Rome and of the 
Romans.* Another enthusiast of this class was Bosius, 

* Shelley caught much of his poetry in wandering among the ruins 
of the palace of the Caesars on the Palatine Hill ; and the impression 
13 



194 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

who sought beneath Rome for another Rome, in those 
catacombs built by the early Christians for their asylum 
and their sepulchre. His work of " Roma Sotteranea " 
is the production of a subterraneous life, passed in fervent 
and perilous labours. Taking with him a hermit's meal 
for the week, this new Pliny often descended into the 
bowels of the earth, by lamp-light, clearing away the sand 
and ruins till a tomb broke forth, or an inscription became 
legible. Accompanied by some friend whom his enthu- 
siasm had inspired with his own sympathy, here he dic- 
tated his notes, tracing the mouldering sculpture, and 
catching the fading picture. Thrown back into the primi- 
tive ages of Christianity, amid the local impressions, the 
historian of the Christian catacombs collected the memo- 
rials of an age and of a race which were hidden beneath 
the earth.* 

The same enthusiasm surrounds the world of science 
with that creative imagination which has startled even 
men of science by its peculiar discoveries. Werner, the 
mineralogist, celebrated for his lectures, appears, by some 
accounts transmitted by his auditors, to have exercised 
this faculty. Werner often said that "he always de- 
pended on the muse for inspiration." His unwritten lec- 
ture was a reverie — till kindling in his progress, blending 
science and imagination in the grandeur of his concep- 
tions, at times, as if he had gathered about him the very 
elements of nature, his spirit seemed to be hovering over 
the waters and the strata. With the same enthusiasm 
of science, Cuvier meditated on some bones, and some 

made by historic ruins on the mind of Byron is powerfully evinced in 
his " Childe Harold."— Ed. 

* A large number of these important memorials have been since 
removed to the Galleria Lapidaria of the Vatican, and arranged on the 
walls by Harini. They are invaluable as mementoes of the early 
Church at Rome. Aringhi has also devoted a work to their elucida- 
tion. The Rev. C. Maitland's " Church in the Catacombs " in an able 
general summary, clearly displaying their intrinsic historic value. — Ed. 



WERNER AND CUTIER. 195 

fragments of bones, which could not belong to any 
known class of the animal kingdom. The philosopher 
dwelt on these animal ruins till he constructed numerous 
species which had disappeared from the globe. This sub- 
lime naturalist has ascertained and classified the fossil 
remains of animals whose existence can no longer be 
traced in the records of mankind. His own language 
bears testimony to the imagination which carried him on 
through a career so strange and wonderful. "It is a 
rational object of ambition in the mind of man, to whom 
only a short space of time is allotted upon earth, to have 
the glory of restoring the history of thousands of ages 
ichich precedeoZ the existence of his race, and of thmisands 
of animals that never were contemporaneous loith his spe- 
cies" Philosophy becomes poetry, and science imagina- 
tion, in the enthusiasm of genius. Even in the practical 
part of a science, painful to the operator himself, Mr. Aber- 
nethy has declared, and eloquently declared, that this 
enthusiasm is absolutely requisite. " We have need of 
enthusiasm, or some strong incentive, to induce us to 
spend our nights in study, and our days in the disgust- 
ing and health-destroying observation of human diseases, 
which alone can enable us to understand, alleviate, or 
remove them. On no other terms can we be considered 
as real students of our profession — to confer that which 
sick kings would fondly purchase with their diadem — 
that which wealth cannot purchase, nor state nor rank 
bestow — to alleviate the most insupportable of human 
afflictions." Such is the enthusiasm of the physiologist 
of genius, who elevates the demonstrations of anatomical 
inquiries by the cultivation of the intellectual faculties, 
connecting "man with the common Master of the uni- 
verse." 

This enthusiasm inconceivably fills the mind of genius 
in all great and solemn operations. It is an agitation 
amidst calmness, and is required not only in the fine arts, 



196 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

but wherever a great and continued exertion of the soul 
must be employed. The great ancients, who, if they were 
not always philosophers, were always men of genius, saw, 
or imagined they saw, a divinity within the man. This 
enthusiasm is alike experienced in the silence of study 
and amidst the roar of cannon, in painting a picture or in 
scaling a rampart. View De Thou, the historian, after 
his morning prayers, imploring the Divinity to purify his 
heart from partiality and hatred, and to open his spirit in 
developing the truth, amidst the contending factions of 
his times ; and Haydn, employed in his " Creation," earn- 
estly addressing the Creator ere he struck his instrument. 
In moments like these, man becomes a perfect unity — one 
thought and one act, abstracted from all other thoughts 
and all other acts. This intensity of the mind was felt 
by Gray in his loftiest excursions, and is perhaps the 
same power which impels the villager, when, to overcome 
his rivals in a contest for leaping, he retires back some 
steps, collects all exertion into his mind, and clears the 
eventful bound. One of our admirals in the reign of 
Elizabeth held as a maxim, that a height of passion, 
amounting to frenzy, was necessary to qualify a man for 
the command of a fleet ; and Nelson, decorated by all his 
honours about him, on the day of battle, at the sight of 
those emblems of glory emulated himself. This enthu- 
siasm was necessary for his genius, and made it effective. 
But this enthusiasm, prolonged as it often has been by 
the operation of the imaginative existence, becomes a 
state of perturbed feeling, and can only be distinguished 
from a disordered intellect by the power of volition pos- 
sessed by a sound mind of withdrawing from the ideal 
world into the world of sense. It is but a step which 
may carry us from the wanderings of fancy into the aber- 
rations of delirium. The endurance of attention, even in 
minds of the highest order, is limited by a law of nature ; 
and when thinking is goaded on to exhaustion, confusion 



POWER OF THOUGHT. 197 

of ideas ensues, as straining any one of our limbs by 
excessive exertion produces tremor and torpor. 

"With, curious art the brain too finely wrought, 
Preys on herself and is destroyed by Thought; 
Constant attention wears the active mind, 
Blots out her powers, and leaves a blank behind — 
The greatest genius to this fate may bow. 

Even minds less susceptible than high genius may be- 
come overpowered by their imagination. Often, in the 
deep silence around us, we seek to relieve ourselves by 
some voluntary noise or action which may direct our at- 
tention to an exterior object, and bring us back to the 
world, which we had, as it were, left behind us. The cir- 
cumstance is sufficiently familiar; as well as another; 
that whenever we are absorbed in profound contempla- 
tion, a startling noise scatters the spirits, and painfully 
agitates the whole frame. The nerves are then in a state 
of the utmost relaxation. There may be an agony in 
thought w T hich only deep thinkers experience. The ter^ 
rible effect of metaphysical studies on Beattie has been 
told by himself. " Since the ' Essay on Truth ' was print- 
ed in quarto, I have never dared to read it over. I 
durst not even read the sheets to see whether there were 
any errors in the print, and was obliged to get a friend 
to do that office for me. These studies came in time to 
have dreadful effects upon my nervous system; and I 
cannot read what I then wrote without some degree of 
horror, because it recalls to my mind the horrors that I 
have sometimes felt after passing a long evening in those 
severe studies." 

Goldoni, after a rash exertion of writing sixteen plays 
in a year, confesses he paid the penalty of the folly. He 
flew to Genoa, leading a life of delicious vacuity. To 
pass the day without doing anything, was all the enjoy- 
ment he was now capable of feeling. But long after he 
said, " I felt at that time, and have ever since continued 



193 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

to feel, the consequences of that exhaustion of spirits I 
sustained in composing my sixteen comedies." 

The enthusiasm of study was experienced by Pope in 
his self-education, and once it clouded over his fine 
intellect. It was the severity of his application which 
distorted his body ; and he then partook of a calamity 
incidental to the family of genius, for he sunk into that 
state of exhaustion which Smollett experienced during 
half a year, called a coma vigil, an affection of the brain, 
where the principle of life is so reduced, that all ex- 
ternal objects appear to be passing in a dream. Boer- 
haave has related of himself, that having imprudently 
indulged in intense thought on a particular subject, he 
did not close his eyes for six weeks after ; and Tissot, in 
his work on the health of men of letters, abounds in 
similar cases, where a complete stupor has affected the 
unhappy student for a period of six months. 

Assuredly the finest geniuses have not always the 
power to withdraw themselves from that intensely inter- 
esting train of ideas, which we have shown has not been 
removed from about them by even the violent stimuli of 
exterior objects; and the scenical illusion which then 
occurs, has been called the hallucinatio studiosa, or false 
ideas in reverie. Such was the state in which Petrarch 
found himself, in that minute narrative of a vision in 
which Laura appeared to him ; and Tasso, in the lofty 
conversations he held with a spirit that glided towards 
him on the beams of the sun. In this state was Male- 
branche listening to the voice of God within him; and 
Lord Herbert, when, to know whether he should publish 
his book, he threw himself on his knees, and interrogated 
the Deity in the stillness of the sky.* And thus Pascal 

* In his curious autobiography he ha3 given the prayer he used, end- 
ing, "I am not satisfied whether I shall publish this book de veritate; 
if it be for thy glory, I beseech thee give me some sign from heaven; 
if not I shall suppress it." His lordship adds, ' : I had no sooner spoken 



YISIOtfAKIES OF GENIUS. 199 

started at times at a fiery gulf opening by his side. Spi- 
nello having painted the fall of the rebellious angels, had 
so strongly imagined the illusion, and more particularly 
the terrible features of Lucifer, that he was himself struck 
with such horror as to have been long afflicted with the 
presence of the demon to which his genius had given 
birth. The influence of the same ideal presence operated 
on the religious painter Angeloni, who could never rep- 
resent the sufferings of Jesus without his eyes overflowing 
with tears. Descartes, when young, and in a country 
seclusion, his brain exhausted with meditation, and his 
imagination heated to excess, heard a voice in the air 
which called him to pursue the search of truth ; nor did 
he doubt the vision, and this delirious dreaming of genius 
charmed him even in his after-studies. Our Collins and 
Cowper were often thrown into that extraordinary state 
of mind, when the ideal presence converts us into vision- 
aries ; and their illusions were as strong as Swedenborg's, 
who saw a terrestrial heaven in the glittering streets of 
his Xew Jerusalem; or Jacob Behmen's, who listened to 
a celestial voice till he beheld the apparition of an angel; 
or Cardan's, when he so carefully observed a number of 
little armed men at his feet ; or Benvenuto Cellini's, 
whose vivid imagination and glorious egotism so fre- 
quently contemplated "a resplendent light hovering over 
his shadow." 

Such minds identified themselves with their visions ! 
If we pass them over by asserting that they were insane, 
we are only cutting the knot which we cannot untie. We 

these words but a loud, though, gentle noise came from the heavens 
(for it was like nothing on earth) which did so comfort and cheer me, 
that I took my petition as granted, and that I had the sign I demanded 
whereupon also I resolved to print my book. This (how strange soever 
it may seem) I protest before the eternal G-od is true, neither am I any 
way superstitiously deceived therein, since I did not only clearly hear 
the noise, but in the serenest sky that ever I saw, being without all 
cloud, did to my thinking see the place from whence it came." — Ed. 



OQO LITERARY CIIARACTER. 

have no right to deny what BOme maintain, that I sym- 
pathy of the oorporea] with the incorporeal nature o\' man, 
his imaginative with his physical existence, is an excite- 
ment which appears to have been experienced by persona 

of a peculiar organization, and which metaphysicians in 
despair mnst resign to the speculations o\' enthusiasts 
themselves, though metaphysicians reason about phe- 
nomena tar removed tVom the perceptions of the I 
The historian of the mind cannot omit this fact, unques- 
tionable, however incomprehensible. According t»» our 
own conceptions, this state musl produce a strange myste- 
rious personage : a concentration of a human being within 
himself, endowed with inward ryes, ears which listen to in- 
terior sounds, and invisible hands touching impalpable ob- 
jects, jbr whatever they act or however they are acted on, 
as far as respects themselves all must have passed within 
their own minds. The Platonic Dr. More flattered him- 
self that he was an enthusiast without enthusiasm, which 
seems but a suspicious state of convalescence. k ' I must 
ingenuously confess," he says, " that 1 have a Datura! touch 
of enthusiasm in my complexion, but such as I thank God 
was ever governable enough, and have found at length 
perfectly subduable. In virtue of which victory I know 
better what is in enthusiasts than they themselves ; and 
therefore was able to write with life and judgment, and 
shall, I hope, contribute not a little to the peace and quiet 
of this kingdom thereby." Thus tar one of its votaries : 
and all that he vaunts to have acquired by this mysterious 
faculty of enthusiasm is the having rendered it " at lengi h 
perfectly subduable." Yet those who have written on 
"Mystical devotion," have declared that, "it is a sublime 
state of mind to which whole sects have aspired, and some 
individuals appear to have attained."* The histories 

* Charles Butler has drawn up a sensible essay on "Mystical Devo- 
tion." He was a Roman Catholic. Norris, and Dr. Henry More, and 
Bishop Beikeley, may be consulted by the curious. 



E5THT?-IAS1£. 

great visionaries, were they correcth I, would 

probably prove how their delusions consists 
lar q *,heir brain and t: ^ted sensations of 

their nerves. Bayle has conjured up an amusing t) 
of apparitions, to show that Hobbes, who was s t - 
occasional terrors, might fear that a certain combination 
of atoms agitating his brain might so disorder his mind 
as to expose him to spectral visions ; and so being very 
timid, and di s trusting his own imagination, he was averse 
at times to be left alone. Apparitions often happen in 
dreams, but they may happen to a man when awake, to 
reading and hearing of them would revive their images, 
and these images might play even an incredulous phi- 
losopher some unlucky trick. 

But men of genius whose enthusiasm has not been past 
recovery, have experienced this extraordinary state of 
the mind, in those exhaustions of study to which they 
unquestionably are subject. Tfesot, on "The Health of 
Men of Letters,'' has produced a terrifying numb 
eases. They see and hear what none but themselves do. 
us thrown into this peculiar state has produced some 
noble effusions. Kotzebue was once absorbed m hypo- 
chondriacal melancholy, and appears to have medr 
on self-destruction; but it happened that he preserved 
his habit of dramatic composition, and yrofaeeA one of 
his most energetic dramas — that of " Misanthropy and 
Repentance. 5 ' He tells us that he had never experienced 
sucba rapid flow of thoughts and images, and he believed, 
what a physiological history would perhaps show, that 

nerves, which actually stretch the powers of the mind 
beyond their usual reach. It is the more vivid world 
of ideal existence. 

But what is more evident, men of the finest genius have 
experienced these hallucinations in society acting on their 
moral habits. They have insulated the mind. With 



202 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

them ideas have become realities, and suspicions certain- 
ties ; while events have been noted down as seen and 
heard, which in truth had never occurred. Rousseau's 
phantoms scarcely ever quitted him for a day. Barry 
imagined that he was invisibly persecuted by the Royal 
Academy, who had even spirited up a gang of house- 
breakers. The vivid memoirs of Alfieri will authenticate 
what Donne, who himself had suffered from them, calls 
" these eclipses, sudden offuscations and darkening of the 
senses." Too often the man of genius, with a vast and 
solitary power, darkens the scene of life ; he builds a 
pyramid between himself and the sun. Mocking at the 
expedients by which society has contrived to protect its 
feebleness, he would break down the institution from 
which he has shrunk away in the loneliness of his feelings. 
Such is the insulating intellect in which some of the most 
elevated spirits have been reduced. To imbue ourselves 
with the genius of their works, even to think of them, is 
an awful thing ! In nature their existence is a solecism, 
as their genius is a paradox ; for their crimes seem to be 
without guilt, their curses have kindness in them, and if 
they afflict mankind it is in sorrow. 

Yet what less than enthusiasm is the purchase-price of 
high passion and invention ? Perhaps never has there 
been a man of genius of this rare cast, who has not be- 
trayed the ebullitions of imagination in some outward 
action, at that period when the illusions of life are more 
real to genius than its realities. There is a fata mor- 
gana, that throws into the air a pictured land, and the 
deceived eye trusts till the visionary shadows glide away. 
"I have dreamt of a golden land," exclaimed Fuseli, 
" and solicit in vain for the barge which is to carry me to 
its shore." A slight derangement of our accustomed 
habits, a little perturbation of the faculties, and a roman- 
tic tinge on the feelings, give no indifferent promise of 
genius ; of that generous temper which knowing nothing 



ENTHUSIASM. 203 

of the baseness of mankind, with indefinite views carries 
on some glorious design to charm the world or to make 
it happier. Often we hear, from the confessions of men 
of genius, of their having in youth indulged the most 
elevating and the most chimerical projects ; and if age 
ridicule thy imaginative existence, be assured that it is 
the decline of its genius. That virtuous and tender en- 
thusiast, Fenelon, in his early youth, troubled his friends 
with a classical and religious 'reverie. He- was on the 
point of quitting them to restore the independence of 
Greece, with the piety of a missionary, and with the taste 
of a classical antiquary. The Peloponnesus opened to 
him the Church of Corinth, where St. Paul preached, the 
Piraeus where Socrates conversed ; while the latent poet 
was to pluck laurels from Delphi, and rove amidst the 
amenities of Tempe. Such was the influence of the ideal 
presence ; and barren will be his imagination, and luck- 
less his fortune, who, claiming the honours of genius, has 
never been touched by such a temporary delirium. 

To this enthusiasm, and to this alone, can we attribute 
the self-immolation of men of genius. Mighty and labo- 
rious works have been pursued as a forlorn hope, at the 
certain destruction of the fortune of the individual. Vast 
labours attest the enthusiasm which accompanied their 
progress. Such men have sealed their works with their 
blood: they have silently borne the pangs of disease; 
they have barred themselves from the pursuits of fortune ; 
they have torn themselves away from all they loved in 
life, patiently suffering these self-denials, to escape from 
interruptions and impediments to their studies. Martyrs 
of literature and art, they behold in their solitude the 
halo of immortality over their studious heads — that fame 
which is "a life beyond life." Van Helmont, in his 
library and in his laboratory, preferred their busy soli- 
tude to the honours and the invitations of Eodolphus II., 
there writing down what he daily experienced during 



204: LITERARY CHARACTER. 

thirty years ; nor would the enthusiast yield up to the 
emperor one of those golden and visionary days ! Milton 
would not desist from proceeding with one of his works, 
although warned by the physician of the certain loss of 
his sight. He declared he preferred his duty to his eyes, 
and doubtless his fame to his comfort. Anthony Wood, 
to preserve the lives of others, voluntarily resigned his 
own to cloistered studies ; nor did the literary passion 
desert him in his last moments, when with his dying 
hands the hermit of literature still grasped his beloved 
papers, and his last mortal thoughts dwelt on his " Athenaa 
Oxonienses." Moreri, the founder of our great biogra- 
phical collections conceived the design with such enthu- 
siasm, and found such seduction in the labour, that he 
willingly withdrew from the popular celebrity he had 
acquired as a preacher, and the preferment which a min- 
ister of state, in whose house he resided, would have 
opened to his views.* After the first edition of his 
"Historical Dictionary," he had nothing so much at 
heart as its improvement. His unyielding application 
was converting labour into death ; but collecting his last 
renovated vigour, with his dying hands he gave the vol- 
ume to the world, though he did not live to witness even 
its publication. All objects in life appeared mean to him, 
compared with that exalted delight of addressing, to the 
literary men of his age, the history of their brothers. 
Such are the men, as Bacon says of himself, who are 
"the servants of posterity," 

Who scorn delights, and live laborious days I 

The same enthusiasm inspires the pupils of art con- 
sumed by their own ardour. The young and classical 

* Louis Moreri was born in Provence in 1643, and died in 1680, at 
the early age of 37, while engaged on a second edition of his great 
work. The minister alluded to in the text was M. de Pomponne, Sec- 
retary of State to Louis XIV. until the year 1679.— Ed. 



ENTHUSIASM. 205 

sculptor who raised the statue of Charles II., placed in 
the centre of the Royal Exchange, was, in the midst of 
his work, advised by his medical friends to desist ; for 
the energy of his labour, with the strong excitement of 
his feelings, already had made fatal inroads in his consti- 
tution : but he was willing, he said, to die at the foot of 
his statue. The statue was raised, and the young sculp- 
tor, with the shining eye and hectic flush of consumption, 
beheld it there — returned home — and died. Drouais, a 
pupil of David, the French painter, was a youth of fortune, 
but the solitary pleasure of his youth was his devotion to 
Raphael; he was at his studies from four in the morning 
till night. " Painting or nothing !" was the cry of this 
enthusiast of elegance ; " First fame, then amusement," 
was another. His sensibility was great as his enthusiasm ; 
and he cut in pieces the picture for which David declared 
he would inevitably obtain the prize. " I have had my 
reward in your approbation ; but next year I shall feel 
more certain of deserving it," was the reply of this young 
enthusiast. Afterwards he astonished Paris with his 
"Marius;" but while engaged on a subject which he 
could never quit, the principle of life itself was drying up 
in his veins. Henry Headley and Kirke White were the 
early victims of the enthusiasm of study, and are mourned 
by the few who are organized like themselves. 

'Twas thine own genius gave the final blow, 
And help'd to plant the wound that laid thee low ; 
So the struck eagle, stretch'd upon the plain, 
No more through rolling clouds to soar again, 
Yiew'd his own feather on the fatal dart, 
And wing'd the shaft that quiver'd in his heart ; 
Keen were his pangs, but keener far to feel 
He nursed the pinion which irapell'd the steel, 
"While the same plumage that had warm'd his nest, 
Drank the last life-drop of his bleeding breast. 

One of our former great students, when reduced in health 



206 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

by excessive study, was entreated to abandon it, and in 
the scholastic language of the day, not to perdere sub- 
stantiam propter accidentia. With a smile the martyr 
of study repeated a verse from Juvenal : 

Xec propter vitara vivendi perdere causas. 
No ! not for life lose that for which I live I 

Thus the shadow of death falls among those who are 
existing with more than life about them. Yet " there is 
no celebrity for the artist," said Gesner, "if the love of 
his own art do not become a vehement passion ; if the 
hours he employs to cultivate it be not for him the most 
delicious ones of his life ; if study become not his true ex- 
istence and his first happiness ; if the society of his 
brothers in art be not that which most pleases him; if 
even in the night-time the ideas of his art £o not occupy 
his vigils or his dreams ; if in the morning he fly not to 
his work, impatient to recommence what he left unfinished. 
These are the marks of him who labours for true glory 
and posterity ; but if he seek only to please the taste of 
his age, his works will not kindle the desires nor touch 
the hearts of those who love the arts and the artists." 

Unaccompanied by enthusiasm, genius will produce 
nothing but uninteresting works of art ; not a work of art 
resembling the dove of Archytas, which beautiful piece 
of mechanism, while other artists beheld flying, no one 
could frame such another dove to meet it in the air. 
Enthusiasm is that secret and harmonious spirit which 
hovers over the production of genius, throwing the reader 
of a book, or the spectator of a statue, into the very ideal 
presence whence these works have really originated. A 
great work always leaves us in a state of musing. 



JEALOUSY OF GESIT3. 207 



CHAPTER XIII. 

Of the jealousy of Genius. — Jealousy often proportioned to the degree 
of genius. — A perpetual fever among Authors and Artists. — Instances 

c: :: ; :i::f :.:':'.i er:;== i~:zz ::::j.r:f ;~;1 'jtItIi::;:: — 2: ;. ;?- 
:-.L:.\: et~::t5. ~iere :if fever :or;_~c-= fue ivjferer, ~::\l: :.: i:s 
malignancy. 

JEALOUSY, long supposed to be the offspring of little 
minds, is not, however, confined to them. In the 
literary republic, the passion fiercely rages among the 
tors as well as among the people. In that curious 
s.:- Inscription -which Linna?us comprised in a single 
page, written with the precision of a naturalist, that 
great man discovered that his constitution was liable to 
with jealousy. Literary jealousy seems oit en 
proportioned :; the legree of genius, and the shadowy 
and equivocal claims of literary honour is the real cause 
of this terrible fear ; for in : s a 5 wh at a t b e : e :•: is more 
palpable and definite than intellectual excellence, jeal- 
ousy loes not appear so strongly : affect the claimant 
admiration. The most be autiful woman, in the sf - 
son of beauty, is more haughty than jealous : she rarely 
encounters a rival; and while her claims exis:. who can 
contend with a fine feature or a lissolving _"/y.;: ; 
a man of genius has no other existence than in 
the opinion of the world; a divided empire would 
-;nre him, and a contested one might pr; ve bis 
annihilation. 

The lives of authors and artists exhibit a most painful 
•se in that jealousy which is the perpetual fever : 
their existence. Why does Plate never mention Xeno- 
phon. and why does Xenophon inveigh against Plato, 
studiously ;:llecting every little rumonr which may de- 
tract from his fame? They wrote do the ^me snbieot ! 



208 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

The studied affectation of Aristotle to differ from the 
doctrines of his master Plato while he was following 
them, led him into ambiguities and contradictions which 
have been remarked. The two fathers of our poetry, 
Chaucer and Gower, suffered their friendship to be inter- 
rupted towards the close of their lives. Chaucer bitterly 
reflects on his friend for the indelicacy of some of his 
tales : " Of all such cursed stories I say fy I" and Gower, 
evidently in return, erased those verses in praise of his 
friend which he had inserted in the first copy of his 
" Confessio Amantis." Why did Corneille, tottering to 
the grave, when Racine consulted him on his first tragedy, 
advise the author never to write another? Why does 
Yoltaire continually detract from the sublimity of Cor- 
neille, the sweetness of Racine, and the fire of Crebillon ? 
Why did Dryden never speak of Otway with kindness 
but when in his grave, then acknowledging that Otway 
excelled him in the pathetic ? Why did Leibnitz speak 
slightingly of Locke's Essay, and meditate on nothing 
less than the complete overthrow of Newton's system ? 
Why, when Boccaccio sent to Petrarch a copy of Dante, 
declaring that the work was like a first light which had 
illuminated his mind, did Petrarch boldly observe that 
he had not been anxious to inquire after it, for intending 
himself to compose it in the vernacular idiom, he had no 
wish to be considered as a plagiary ? and he only allows 
Dante's superiority from having written in the vulgar 
idiom, which he did not consider an enviable merit. Thus 
frigidly Petrarch could behold the solitary iEtna befo^ 
him, in the " Inferno," while he shrunk into himself with 
the painful consciousness of the existence of another poet, 
obscuring his own majesty. It is curious to observe 
Lord Shaftesbury treating with the most acrimonious 
contempt the great writers of his own times — Cowley, 
Dryden, Addison, and Prior. We cannot imagine that 
his lordship was so entirely destitute of every feeling of 



JEALOUSY OF AUTHORS. 209 

wit and genius, as would appear by this damnatory criti- 
cism on all the wit and genius of his age. It is not, in- 
deed, difficult to comprehend a different motive for this 
extravagant censure in the jealousy which even a great 
writer often experiences when he comes in contact with 
his living rivals, and hardily, if not impudently, practises 
those arts of critical detraction to raise a moment's delu- 
sion, which can gratify no one but himself. 

The moral sense has often been found too weak to 
temper the malignancy of literary jealousy, and has im- 
pelled some men of genius to an incredible excess. A 
memorable example offers in the history of the two bro- 
thers, Dr. William and John Hunter, both great charac- 
ters fitted to be rivals ; but Nature, it was imagined, in 
the tenderness of blood, had placed a bar to rivalry. 
John, without any determined pursuit in his youth, was 
received by his brother at the height of his celebrity ; the 
doctor initiated him into his school; they performed 
their experiments together ; and William Hunter was the 
first to announce to the world the great genius of his 
brother. After this close connexion in all their studies 
and discoveries, Dr. William Hunter published his mag- 
nificent work — the proud favourite of his heart, the as- 
sertor of his fame. Was it credible that the genius of 
the celebrated anatomist, which had been nursed under 
the wing of his brother, should turn on that wing to clip 
it ? John Hunter put in his claim to the chief discovery ; 
it was answered by his brother. The Royal Society, 
to whom they appealed, concealed the documents of this 
unnatural feud. The blow was felt, and the jealousy of 
literary honour for ever separated the brothers — the 
brothers of genius. 

Such, too, was the jealousy which separated Agostino 

and Annibal Carracci, whom their cousin Ludovico for 

so many years had attempted to unite, and who, during 

the time their academy existed, worked together, com- 
14 



210 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

bining their separate powers.* The learning ami the 
philosophy of Agostino assisted the invention of the 
master genius, Aimibal; but Annibal was jealous of the 
more literary and poetical character of Agostino, and, by 
hi- sarcastic humour, frequently mortified his learned 

brother. Alike great artists, when once employed on the 
same work, Agostino was thought to have excelled his 
brother. Annibal, sullen and seornful, immediately 

broke with him, and their patron, Cardinal Far: 
compelled to separate the brothers. Their fate is strik- 
ing: Agostino, divided from his brother Annibal, sunk 
into dejection and melancholy, and perished by a prema- 
ture death, while Annibal closed his days not long after 
in a state of distraction. The brothers of Nature and 
Art could not live together, and could not live separate. 
The history of artists abounds with instances of jeal- 
ousy, perhaps more than that of any other class of men 
of genius. Hudson, the master of Reynolds, could not 
endure the sight of his rising pupil, and would not 
sutler him to conclude the term of his apprenticeship; 
even the mild and elegant Reynolds himself became so 
jealous of Wilson, that he took every opportunity of 
depreciating his singular excellence. Stung by the mad- 
ness of jealousy, Barry one day addressing Sir Joshua 
on his lectures, burst out, " Such poor flimsy stuff as your 
discourses !" clenching his fist in the agony of the con- 
vulsion. After the death of the great artist, Barry be- 
stowed on him the most ardent eulogium, and deeply 
grieved over the past. But the race of genius born too 
"near the sun" have found their increased sensibility 
flame into crimes of a deeper dye — crimes attesting the 
treachery and the violence of the professors of an art 
which, it appears, in softening the souls of others, does 
not necessarily mollify those of the artists themselves. 

* See an article on the Carracci in " Curiosities of Literature," vol. il 



JEALOUSY OF ARTISTS. 211 

The dreadful story of Andrea del Castagno seems not 
doubtful. Having been taught the discovery of painting 
in oil by Domenico Yenetiano, yet, still envious of the 
merit of the generous friend who had confided that great 
secret to him, Andrea with his own hand secretly assas- 
sinated him, that he might remain without a rival. The 
horror of his crime only appeared in his confession on his 
death-bed. Domenichino seems to have been poisoned for 
the preference he obtained over the Neapolitan artists, 
which raised them to a man against him, and reduced 
him to the necessity of preparing his food with his own 
hand. On his last return to Naples, Passeri says, " JVbn 
fu mai piii veduto da buon occhio da quelli JVapoletani : 
e'li Pittori lo detestavano perchb egli era ritornato — mori 
con qualche sospctto di veleno, e questo non e inverisimile 
perche I'interesso e un perfido tiranno" So that the 
Neapolitans honoured Genius at Naples by poison, which 
they might have forgotten had it flourished at Rome. 
The famous cartoon of the battle of Pisa, a work of Mi- 
chael Angelo, which he produced in a glorious competi- 
tion with the Homer of painting, Leonardo da Yinci, and 
in which he had struck out the idea of a new style, is 
only known by a print which has preserved the wonder- 
ful composition ; for the original, it is said, was cut into 
pieces by the mad jealousy of Baccio Bandinelli, whose 
whole life was made miserable by his consciousness of a 
superior rival. 

In the jealousy of genius, however, there is a peculiar 
case where the fever silently consumes the sufferer, with- 
out possessing the malignant character of the disease. 
Even the gentlest temper declines under its slow wast- 
ings, and this infection may happen among dear friends, 
whenever a man of genius loses that self-opinion which 
animates his solitary labours and constitutes his happi- 
ness. Perhaps when at the height of his class, he sud- 
denly views himself eclipsed by another genius — and that 



212 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

genius his friend ! This is the jealousy, not of hatred, 
but of despair. Churehill observed the feeling, but 
probably included in it a greater degree of malignancy 
than I would now describe. 

Envy which turns pale, 
And sickens even if a friend prevail. 

Swift, in that curious poem on his own death, said of 
Pope that 

He can in ono couplet fix 
More sense than I can do in six. 

The Dean, perhaps, is not quite serious, but probably is 
in the next lines — 

It gives mo such a jealous fit, 

I cry " Pox take him and his wit." 

If the reader pursue this hint throughout the poem, these 
compliments to his friends, always at his own expense, 
exhibit a singular mixture of the sensibility and the 
frankness of true genius, which Swift himself has honestly 
confessed. 

What poet would not grieve to see 

His brother write as well as he ? * 

Addison experienced this painful and mixed emotion 
in his intercourse with Pope, to whose rising celebrity 
he soon became too jealously alive.f It was more 
tenderly, but not less keenly, felt by the Spanish artist 
Castillo, a man distinguished by every amiable disposi- 
tion. He was the great painter of Seville ; but when 
some of his nephew Murillo's paintings were shown to 
him, he stood in meek astonishment before them, and 

* The plain motive of all these dislikes is still more amusing, as given 
in this couplet of the same poem : — 

"If with such genius heaven has blest 'em, 
Have I not reason to detest 'em." — Ed. 
f See article on Pope and Addison in " Quarrels of Authors." 



WAXT OF MUTUAL ESTEEM. 0^3 

turning away, he exclaimed with a sigh — "Yd murio 
Castillo.^ Castillo is no more! Returning home, the 
stricken genius relinquished his pencil, and pined away 
in hopelessness. The same occurrence happened to 
Pietro Perugino, the master of Raphael, whose general 
character as a painter was so entirely eclipsed by his far- 
renowned scholar ; yet, while his real excellences in the 
ease of his attitudes and the mild grace of his female 
countenances have been passed over, it is probable that 
Raphael himself might haTe caught from them his first 
feelings of ideal beauty. 



CHAPTER XIV. 



Want of mutual esteem among men of genius often originates in a defi- 
ciency of analogous ideas. — It is not always envy or jealousy which 
induces men of genius to undervalue each other. 

AMOXG men of genius, that want of mutual esteem, 
usually attributed to envy or jealousy, often orig- 
inates in a deficiency of analogous ideas, or of sympathy, 
in the parties. On this principle, several curious phe- 
nomena in the history of genius may be explained. 

Every man of genius has a manner of his own; a 
mode of thinking and a habit of style, and usually 
decides on a work as it approximates or varies from his 
own. When one great author depreciates another, his 
depreciation has often no worse source than his own 
taste. The witty Cowley despised the natural Chaucer; 
the austere classical Boileau the rough sublimity of Cre- 
billon ; the refining Marivaux the familiar Moliere. Field- 
ing ridiculed Richardson, whose manner so strongly con- 
trasted with his own ; and Richardson contemned Field- 
ing, and declared he would not last. Cumberland escaped 



2U LITERARY CHARACTER. 

a fit of unforgiveness, not living to read his own char- 
acter by Bishop AVatson, whose logical head tried the 
lighter elegancies of that polished man by his own nervous 
genius, destitute of the beautiful in taste. There was no 
envy in the breast of Johnson when he advised Mrs. 
Thrale not to purchase " Gray's Letters," as trifling and 
dull, no more than there was in Gray himself when he 
sunk the poetical character of Shenstone, and debased 
his simplicity and purity of feeling by an image of ludi- 
crous contempt. I have heard that Wilkes, a mere wit 
and elegant scholar, used to treat Gibbon as a mere 
bookmaker ; and applied to that philosophical historian 
the verse by which Voltaire described, with so much 
caustic facetiousness, the genius of the Abbe Trablet — 

II a compile, compile, compile. 

The deficient sympathy in these men of genius for 
modes of feeling opposite to their own was the real cause 
of their opinions; and thus it happens that even su- 
perior genius is so often liable to be unjust and false in 
its decisions. 

The same principle operates still more strikingly in 
the remarkable contempt of men of genius for those pur- 
suits which require talents distinct from their own, and 
a cast of mind thrown by nature into another mould. 
Hence we must not be surprised at the poetical antipa- 
thies of Selden and Locke, as well as Longuerue and 
Buffon. Newton called poetry " ingenious nonsense." 
On the other side, poets undervalue the pursuits of the 
antiquary, the naturalist, and the metaphysician, form- 
ing their estimate by their own favourite scale of imagina- 
tion. As we can only understand in the degree we com- 
prehend, and feel in the degree in which we sympathize, 
we may be sure that in both these cases the parties will 
be found altogether deficient in those qualities of genius 
which constitute the excellence of the other. To this 



PREJUDICES OF GENIUS. 215 

cause, rather than to the one the friends of Mickle ascribed 
to Adam Smith, namely, a personal dislike to the poet, 
may we place the severe mortification which the unfor- 
tunate translator of Camoens suffered from the person to 
whom he dedicated " The Lusiad." The Duke of Buc- 
cleugh was the pupil of the great political economist, 
and so little valued an epic poem, that his Grace had not 
even the curiosity to open the leaves of the presentation 
copy. 

A professor of polite literature condemned the study of 
botany, as adapted to mediocrity of talent, and only de- 
manding patience ; but Linnseus showed how a man of 
genius becomes a creator even in a science which seems 
to depend only on order and method. It will not be a 
question with some whether a man must be endowed 
with the energy and aptitude of genius, to excel in anti- 
quarianism, in natural history, and similar pursuits. The 
prejudices raised against the claims of such to the honours 
of genius have probably arisen from the secluded nature 
of their pursuits, and the little knowledge which the men 
of wit and imagination possess of these persons, who live 
in a society of their own. On this subject a very curious 
circumstance has been revealed respecting Peiresc, whose 
enthusiasm for science was long felt throughout Europe. 
His name was known in every country, and his death was 
lamented in forty languages ; yet was this great literary 
character unknown to several men of genius in his own 
country ; Rochefoucauld declared he had never heard of 
his name, and Malherbe wondered why his death created 
so universal a sensation. 

Madame De Stael was an experienced observer of the 
habits of the literary character, and she has remarked 
how one student usually revolts from the other when 
their occupations are different, because they are a recipro- 
cal annoyance. The scholar has nothing to say to the 
poet, the poet to the naturalist • and even among men of 



216 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

science, those who are differently occupied avoid each 
other, taking little interest in what is out of their own 
circle. Thus we see the classes of literature, like the 
planets, revolving as distinct worlds ; and it would not 
be less absurd for the inhabitants of Venus to treat with 
contempt the powers and faculties of those of Jupiter, 
than it is for the men of wit and imagination those of the 
men of knowledge and curiosity. The wits arc incapable 
of exerting the peculiar qualities which give a real value 
to these pursuits, and therefore they must remain igno- 
rant of their nature and their result. 

It is not then always envy or jealousy which induces 
men of genius to undervalue each other ; the want of 
sympathy will sufficiently account for the want of 
judgment. Suppose Newton, Quinault, and Maehiavel 
accidentally meeting together, and unknown to each 
other, would they not soon have desisted from the vain 
attempt of communicating their ideas ? The philosopher 
would have condemned the poet of the Graces as an in- 
tolerable trifler, and the author of " The Prince" as a dark 
political spy. Maehiavel would have conceived Newton 
to be a dreamer among the stars, and n mere almanack- 
maker among men ; and the other a rhymer, nauseously 
doucereux. Quinault might have imagined that he was 
seated between two madmen. Having annoyed each 
other for some time, they would have relieved their ennui 
by reciprocal contempt, and each have parted with a de- 
termination to avoid hence forward two such disagreeable 
companions. 



SELF-PRAISE. 217 



CHAPTER XV ; 

Self-praise of genius. — The love of praise instinctive in the nature of 
genius. — A high opinion of themselves necessary for their great 
designs. — The Ancients openly claimed their own praise. — And 
several Moderns. — An author knows more of his merits than his 
readers. — And less of his defects. — Authors versatile in their admi- 
ration and their malignity. 

VANITY, egotism, a strong sense of tbeir own suffi- 
ciency, form another accusation against men of genius ; 
but the complexion of self-praise must alter with the occa- 
sion ; for the simplicity of truth may appear vanity, and the 
consciousness of superiority seem envy — to Mediocrity. 
It is we who do nothing, and cannot even imagine any- 
thing to be done, who are so much displeased with 
self-lauding, self-love, self-independence, self-admiration, 
which with the man of genius may often be nothing but 
an ostensible modification of the passion of glory. 

He who exults in himself is at least in earnest ; but he 
who refuses to receive that praise in public for which he 
has devoted so much labour in his privacy, is not ; for he 
is compelled to suppress the very instinct of his nature. 
We censure no man for loving fame, but only for showing 
us how much he is possessed by the passion : thus we 
allow him to create the appetite, but we deny him its ali- 
ment. Our effeminate minds are the willing dupes of 
what is called the modesty of genius, or, as it has been 
termed, " the polished reserve of modern times ;" and this 
from the selfish principle that it serves at least to keep out 
of the company its painful pre-eminence. But this " pol- 
ished reserve," like something as fashionable, the ladies' 
rouge, at first appearing with rather too much colour, 
will in the heat of an evening die away till the true com- 
plexion come out. What subterfuges are resorted to by 



218 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

these pretended modest men of genius, to extort that 
praise from their private circle which is thus openly de- 
nied them ! They have been taken "by surprise enlarg- 
ing their own panegyric, which might rival Pliny's on 
Trajan, for care and copiousness ; or impudently veiling 
themselves with the transparency of a third person ; or 
never prefixing their name to the volume, which they 
would not easily forgive a friend to pass unnoticed. 

Self-love is a principle of action ; but among no class 
of human beings has nature so profusely distributed this 
principle of life and action as through the whole sensitive 
family of genius. It reaches even to a feminine suscepti- 
bility. The love of praise is instinctive in their nature. 
Praise with them is the evidence of the past and the 
pledge of the future. The generous qualities and the 
virtues of a man of genius are really produced by the 
applause conferred on him. " To him whom the world 
admires, the happiness of the world must be dear," said 
Madame De Stael. Romney, the painter, held as a 
maxim that every diffident artist required "almost a 
daily portion of cheering applause." How often do such 
find their powers paralysed by the depression of confi- 
dence or the appearance of neglect ! When the North 
Americans Indians, amid their circle, chant their gods 
and their heroes, the honest savages laud the living wor- 
thies, as well as their departed; and when, as we are 
told, an auditor hears the shout of his own name ; he an- 
swers by a cry of pleasure and of pride. The savage and 
the man of genius are here true to nature, but pleasure 
and pride in his own name must raise no emotion in the 
breast of genius amidst a polished circle. To bring him- 
self down to their usual mediocrity, he must start at an 
expression of regard, and turn away even from one of his 
own votaries. Madame De Stael, an exquisite judge of 
the feelings of the literary character, was aware of this 
change, which has rather occurred in our manners than 



SELF-PRAISE. 219 

in men of genius themselves. " Envy," says that eloquent 
writer, " among the Greeks, existed sometimes between 
rivals ; it has now passed to the spectators ; and by a 
strange singularity the mass of men are jealous of the 
efforts which are tried to add to their pleasures or to 
merit their approbation." 

But this, it seems, is not always the case with men of 
genius, since the accusation we are noticing has been so 
often reiterated. Take from some that supreme confi- 
dence in themselves, that pride of exultation, and you 
crush the germ of their excellence. Many vast designs 
must have perished in the conception, had not their 
authors breathed this vital air of self-delight, this crea- 
tive spirit, so operative in great undertakings. We have 
recently seen this principle in the literary character 
unfold itself in the life of the late Bishop of Landaff. 
Whatever he did, he felt it was done as a master : what- 
ever he wrote, it was, as he once declared, the best work 
on the subject yet written. With this feeling he emu- 
lated Cicero in retirement or in action. " When I am 
dead, you will not soon meet with another John Hun- 
ter," said the great anatomist to one of his garrulous 
friends. An apology is formed by his biographer for re- 
lating the fact, but the weakness is only in the apology. 
When Hogarth was engaged in his work of the Mariage 
d-la-Mode, he said to Reynolds, " I shall very soon gratify 
the world with such a sight as they have never seen 
equalled." — " One of his foibles," adds Northcote, " it is 
well known, was the excessive high opinion he had of his 
own abilities." So pronounced Northcote, who had not 
an atom of his genius. Was it a foible in Hogarth to 
cast the glove, when he always more than redeemed the 
pledge? Corneille has given a very noble full-length 
of the sublime egotism which accompanied him through 
life ;* but I doubt, if we had any such author in the pres- 
* See it versified in " Curiosities of Literature," vol. i., p. 431. 



220 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

ent day, whether he would dare to be so just to himself, 
and so hardy to the public. The self-praise of Buffon 
at least equalled his genius ; and the inscription beneath 
his statue in the library, of the Jardin des Plantes, which 
I have been told was raised to him in his lifetime, exceeds 
all panegyric ; it places him alone in nature, as the first 
and the last interpreter of her works. He said of the 
great geniuses of modern ages, that "there were not 
more than five ; Newton, Bacon, Leibnitz, Montesquieu, 
and Myself." With this spirit he conceived and termi- 
nated his great works, and sat in patient meditation at 
his desk for half a century, till all Europe, even in a state 
of war, bowed to the modern Pliny. 

Nor is the vanity of Buffon, and Voltaire, and Rous- 
seau purely national ; for men of genius in all ages have 
expressed a consciousness of the internal force of genius. 
No one felt this self-exultation more potent than our 
Hobbes ; who has indeed, in his controversy with Wallis, 
asserted that there may be nothing more just than self- 
commendation.* There is a curious passage in the " Pur- 
gatorio" of Dante, where, describing the transitory 
nature of literary fame, and the variableness of human 
opinion, the poet alludes with confidence to his own future 
greatness. Of two authors of the name of Guido, the 
one having eclipsed the other, the poet writes : — 

Cosi ha tolto l'uno all' altro Guido 
La G-loria della lingua : e forse e nato 
Chi Vuno e V altro caccerd di nido. 

Thus has one Guido from the other snatched 
The letter'd pride ; and he perhaps is born 
Who shall drive either from their nest.\ 

De Thou, one of the most noble-minded of historians, 
in the Memoirs of his own life, composed in the third 
person, has surprised and somewhat puzzled the critics, 

* See " Quarrels of Authors," p. 471. f Cary. 



SELF-PRAISE. 221 

by that frequent distribution of self-commendation which 
they knew not how to reconcile with the modesty and 
gravity with which the President was so amply endowed. 
After his great and solemn labour, amidst the injustice of 
his persecutors, this eminent man had sufficient experi- 
ence of his real worth to assert it. Kepler, amidst his 
sublime discoveries, looks down like a superior being on 
other men. He breaks forth in glory and daring egotism : 
" I dare insult mankind by confessing that I am he who 
has turned science to advantage. If I am pardoned, I 
shall rejoice ; if blamed, I shall endure. The die is cast; 
I have written this book, and whether it be read by pos- 
terity or by my contemporaries is of no consequence ; it 
may well wait for a reader during one century, when 
God himself during six thousand years has not sent an 
observer like myself." He truly predicts that " his dis- 
coveries would be verified in succeeding ages ;" and pre- 
fers his own glory to the possession of the electorate of 
Saxony. It was this solitary majesty, this futurity of 
their genius, which hovered over the sleepless pillow of 
Bacon, of Newton, and of Montesquieu ; of Ben Jonson, 
of Milton, and Corneille ; and of Michael Angelo. Such 
men anticipate their contemporaries ; they know they are 
creators, -long before they are hailed as such by the tardy 
consent of the public. These men stand on Pisgah 
heights, and for them the sun shines on a land which 
none can view but themselves. 

There is an admirable essay in Plutarch, " On the 
manner by which we may praise ourselves without ex- 
citing envy in others." The sage seems to consider self- 
praise as a kind of illustrious impudence, and has one 
very striking image : he compares these eulogists to fam- 
ished persons, who finding no other food, in their rage 
have eaten their own flesh, and thus shockingly nour- 
ished themselves by their own substance. He allows 
persons in high office to praise themselves, if by this 



222 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

they can repel calumny and accusations, as did Pericles 
before the Athenians : but the Romans found fault with 
Cicero, who so frequently reminded them of his exertions 
in the conspiracy of Catiline ; while, when Scipio told 
them that " they should not presume to judge of a citizen 
to whom they owed the power of judging all men," the 
people covered themselves with flowers, and followed 
him to the capitol to join in a thanksgiving to Jove. 
" Cicero," adds Plutarch, " praised himself without neces- 
sity. Scipio was in personal danger, and this took away 
what is odious in self-praise." An author seems some- 
times to occupy the situation of a person in high office ; 
and there may be occasions when with a noble simplicity, 
if he appeal to his works, of which all men may judge, 
he may be permitted to assert or to maintain his claims. 
It has at least been the practice of men of genius, for in 
this very essay we find Timotheus, Euripides, and Pindar 
censured, though they deserved all the praise they gave* 
themselves. 

Epicurus, writing to a minister of state, declares, " If 
you desire glory, nothing can bestow it more than the 
letters I write to you:" and Seneca, in quoting these 
words, adds, "What Epicurus promised to his friends, 
that, my Lucilius, I promise you." Orna me/ was the 
constant cry of Cicero; and he desires the historian 
Lucceius to write separately the conspiracy of Catiline, 
and to publish quickly, that while he yet lived he might 
taste the sweetness of his glory. Horace and Ovid were 
equally sensible to their immortality ; but what modern 
poet would be tolerated with such an avowal? Yet 
Dryden honestly declares that it was better for him to 
own this failing of vanity, than the world to do it for 
him ; and adds, " For what other reason have I spent my 
life in so unprofitable a study ? Why am I grown old in 
seeking so barren a reward as fame ? The same parts 
and application which have made me a poet might have 



SELF-PRAISE. 223 

raised me to any honours of the gown." Was not Cer- 
vantes very sensible to his own merits when a rival 
started up ? and did he not assert them too, and distin- 
guish his own work by a handsome compliment ? Lope 
de Vega celebrated his own poetic powers under the 
pseudonyme of a pretended editor, Thomas Barguillos. 
I regret that his noble biographer, than whom no one can 
more truly sympathise with the emotions of genius, has 
censured the bard for his querulous or his intrepid tone, 
and for the quaint conceit of his title-page, where his 
detractor is introduced as a beetle in a vega or garden, 
attacking its flowers, but expiring in the very sweetness 
he would injure. The inscription under Boileau's por- 
trait, which gives a preference to the French satirist over 
Juvenal and Horace, is known to have been written by 
himself. Nor was Butler less proud of his own merits ; 
for he has done ample justice to his "Hudibras," and 
traced out, with great self-delight, its variety of excel- 
lences. Richardson, the novelist, exhibits one of the 
most striking instances of what is called literary vanity, 
the delight of an author in his works ; he has pointed out 
all the beauties of his three great works, in various man- 
ners.* He always taxed a visitor by one of his long 
letters. It was this intense self-delight which produced 
his voluminous labours. 

There are certain authors whose very existence seems 
to require , a high conception of their own talents ; and 
who must, as some animals appear to do, furnish the 
means of life out of their own substance. These men of 
genius open their career with peculiar tastes, or with a 
predilection for some great work of no immediate inter- 
est ; in a word, with many unpopular dispositions. Yet 
we see them magnanimous, though defeated, proceeding 
with the public feeling against them. At length we 

* I have observed them in " Curiosities of Literature," vol. ii., p. 64. 



224: LITERARY CHARACTER. 

view them ranking with their rivals. Without having 
yielded up their peculiar tastes or their incorrigible 
viciousness, they have, however, heightened their indi- 
vidual excellences. No human opinion can change their 
self-opinion. Alive to the consciousness of their powers, 
their pursuits are placed above impediment, and their 
great views can suffer no contraction ; possunt quia posse 
videntur. Such was the language Lord Bacon once ap- 
plied to himself when addressing a king. " I know," said 
the great philosopher, " that I am censured of some con- 
ceit of my ability or worth ; but I pray your majesty im- 
pute it to desire — posswit quia 2)Osse videntur." These 
men of genius bear a charmed mail on their breast; 
"hopeless, not heartless," may be often the motto of 
their ensign ; and if they do not always possess reputa- 
tion, they still look onwards for fame ; for these do not 
necessarily accompany each other. 

An author is more sensible of his own merits, as he also 
is of his labour, which is invisible to all others, while he 
is unquestionably much less sensible to his defects than 
most of his readers. The author not only comprehends 
his merits better, because they have passsed through a 
long process in his mind, but he is familiar with every 
part, while the reader has but a vague notion of the 
whole. Why does an excellent work, by repetition, rise 
in interest ? Because in obtaining this gradual intimacy 
with an author, we appear to recover half <the genius 
which we had lost on a first perusal. The work of genius 
too is associated, in the mind of the author, with much 
more than it contains ; and the true supplement, which 
he only can give, has not always accompanied the work 
itself. We find great men often greater than the books 
they write. Ask the man of genius if he have written all 
that he wished to have written ? Has he satisfied him- 
self in this work, for which you accuse his pride ? Has 
he dared what required intrepidity to achieve? Has he 



SELF-PKAISE. 225 

evaded difficulties which he should have overcome ? The 
mind of the reader has the limits of a mere recipient, 
while that of the author, even after his work, is teeming 
with creation. " On many occasions, my soul seems to 
know more than it can say, and to be endowed with a 
mind by itself, far superior to the mind I really have," 
said Alarivaux, with equal truth and happiness. 

With these explanations of what are called the vanity 
and egotism of Genius, be it remembered, that the sense 
of their own sufficiency is assumed by men at their own 
risk. The great man who thinks greatly of himself, is 
not diminishing that greatness in heaping fuel on his 
fire. It is indeed otherwise with his unlucky brethren, 
with whom an illusion of literary vanity may end in the 
aberrations of harmless madness ; as it happened to Per- 
cival Stockdale. After a parallel between himself and 
Charles XTT. of Sweden, he concludes that " some parts 
will be to his advantage, and some to mine y" but in re- 
gard to fame, the main object between himself and 
Charles XII., Percival imagined that "his own will not 
probably take its fixed and immovable station, and shine 
with its expanded and permanent splendour, till it con- 
secrates his ashes, till it illumines his tomb." After this 
the reader, who may never have heard of the name of 
Percival Stockdale, must be told that there exist his own 
" Memoirs of his Life and Writings." * The memoirs of 
a scribbler who saw the prospects of life close on him 
while he imagined that his contemporaries were unjust, 
are instructive to literary men. To correct, and to be 
corrected, should be their daily practice, that they may 
be taught not only to exult in themselves, but to fear 
themselves. 

It is hard to refuse these men of genius that aura 
vital 'is, of which they are so apt to be liberal to others. 

* T haTe sketched a character of 
of Authors" (pp. 218-224) ; it was taken ad vivum. 
15 



226 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

Are they not accused of the meanest adulations ? When 
a young writer experiences the notice of a person of some 
eminence, he has expressed himself in language which 
transcends that of mortality. A finer reason than reason 
itself inspires it. The sensation has been expressed with 
all its fulness by Milton : — 

The debt immense of endless gratitude. 

Who ever pays an " immense debt " in small sums ? 
Every man of genius has left such honourable traces of 
his private affections ; from Locke, whose dedication of 
his great work is more adulative than could be imagined 
from a temperate philosopher, to Churchill, whose warm 
eulogiums on his friends beautifully contrast with his 
satire. Even in advanced age, the man of genius dwells 
on the praise he caught in his youth from veteran genius, 
which, like the aloe, will flower at the end of life. When 
Virgil Avas yet a youth, it is said that Cicero heard one of 
his eclogues, and exclaimed with his accustomed warmth, 

Magna spes altera Roma? I 

" The second hope of mighty Rome !" intending by the 
first either himself or Lucretius. The words of Cicero 
were the secret honey on which the imagination of Virgil 
fed for many a year ; for in one of his latest productions, 
the twelfth book of the iEneid, he applies these very 
words to Ascanius. So long had the accents of Cicero's 
praise lingered in the poet's ear ! 

This extreme susceptibility of praise in men of genius 
is the same exuberant sensibility which is so alive to cen- 
sure. I have elsewhere fully shown how some have died 
of criticism.* The self-love of genius is perhaps much 
more delicate than gross. 

But this fatal susceptibility is the cause of that strange 
facility which has often astonished the world, by the 

* In the article entitled "Anecdotes of Censured Authors," in voL 
i of " Curiosities of Literature." 



SENSITIVENESS OF GENIUS. 227 

sudden transitions of sentiment which literary characters 
have frequently exhibited. They have eulogised man 
and events which they had reprobated, and reprobated 
what they had eulogised. The recent history of political 
revolutions has furnished some monstrous examples of 
this subservience to power. Guicciardini records one of 
his own times, which has been often repeated in ours. 
Jovianus Pontanus, the Secretary of Ferdinand, King of 
Naples, was also selected to be the tutor of the prince, 
his son. When Charles VIII. of France invaded Naples, 
Pontanus was deputed to address the French conqueror. 
To render himself agreeable to the enemies of his coun- 
try, he did not avoid expatiating on the demerits of his 
expelled patrons : " So difficult it is," adds the grave 
and dignified historian, " for ourselves to observe that 
moderation and those precepts which no man knew bet- 
ter than Pontanus, who was endowed with such copious 
literature, and composed with such facility in moral phi- 
losophy, and possessed such acquirements in universal 
erudition, that he had made himself a prodigy to the eye 
of the world."* The student, occupied by abstract pur- 
suits, may not indeed always take much interest in the 
change of dynasties ; and perhaps the famous cancelled 
dedication to Cromwell, by the learned orientalist, Dr. 
Castell,f who supplied its place by another to Charles II., 
ought not to be placed to the account of political tergiv- 
ersation. But the versatile adoration of the continental 
savcms of the republic or the monarchy, the consul or the 
emperor, has inflicted an unhealing wound on the literary 
character; since, like Pontanus, to gratify their new 
master, they had not the greatness of mind to save them- 
selves from ingratitude to their old. 

* G-uicciardini, Book II. 

f Eor the melancholy history of this devoted scholar, see note to the 
article on " The Eewards of Oriental Students," in " Calamities of Au- 
thors," p. 1S9. 



228 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

Their vengeance, as quickly kindled, lasts as long. 
Genius is a dangerous gift of nature. The same efferves- 
cent passions from a Catiline or a Cicero. Plato lays 
great stress on his man of genius possessing the most 
vehement passions, but he adds reason to restrain them. 
It is Imagination which by their side stands as their 
good or evil spirit. Glory or infamy is but a different 
direction of the same passion. 

How are we to describe symptoms which, flowing from 
one source, yet show themselves in such opposite forms 
as those of an intermittent fever, a silent delirium, or a 
horrid hypochondriasm ? Have we no other opiate to still 
the agony, no other cordial to warm the heart, than the 
great ingredient in the recipe of Plato's visionary man 
of genius — calm reason ? Must men, who so rarely 
obtain this tardy panacea, remain with all their tortured 
and torturing passions about them, often self-disgusted, 
self-humiliated ? The enemies of genius are often connect- 
ed with their morbid imagination. These originate in 
casual slights, or in unguarded expressions, or in hasty 
opinions, or in witty derisions, or even in the obtruding 
goodness of tender admonition. The man of genius broods 
over the phantom that darkens his feelings: he mul- 
tiplies a single object; he magnifies the smallest; and 
suspicions become certainties. It is in this unhappy 
state that he sharpens his vindictive fangs, in a libel 
called his " Memoirs," or in another species of public 
outrage, styled a " Criticism." 

We are told that Comines the historian, when residing 
at the court of the Count de Charolois, afterwards Duke 
of Burgundy, one day returning from hunting, with in- 
considerate jocularity sat down before the Count and 
ordered the prince to pull off his boots. The Count 
would not affect greatness, and having executed his com- 
mission, in return for the princely amusement, the Count 
dashed the boot on Comines' nose, which bled ; and from 



SENSITIVENESS OF GENIUS. 229 

that time, he was mortified at the court of Burgundy, 
by retaining the nickname of the booted head. The 
blow rankled in the heart of the man of genius, and the 
Duke of Burgundy has come down to us in Comines' 
" Memoirs," blackened by his vengeance. Many, un- 
known to their readers, like Comines, have had a booted 
head ; but the secret poison is distilled on their lasting 
page, as we have recently witnessed in Lord Walde- 
grave's " Memoirs." Swift's perpetual malevolence to 
Dry den originated in that great poet's prediction, that 
" cousin Swift would never be a poet ;" a prediction which 
the wit never could forget. I have elsewhere fully writ- 
ten a tale of literary hatred, where is seen a man of 
genius, in the character of Gilbert Stuart, devoting a 
whole life to harassing the industry or the genius which 
he himself could not attain.* 

A living Italian poet of great celebrity, when at the 
court of Rome, presented a magnificent edition of his 
poetry to Pius VI. The bard, Mr. Hobhouse informs us, 
lived not in the good graces of his holiness, and although 
the pontiff accepted the volume, he did not forbear a 
severity of remark which could not fall unheeded by the 
modern poet ; for on this occasion, repeating some verses 
of Metastasio, his holiness drily added, " No one nowa- 
days writes like that great poet." Never was this to be 
erased from memory ; the stifled resentment of Monti 
vehemently broke forth at the moment the French car- 
ried off Pius VX from Pome. Then the long indignant 
secretary poured forth an invective more severe " against 
the great harlot," than was ever traced by a Protestant 
pen — Monti now invoked the rock of Sardinia ; the poet 
bade it fly from its base, that the last of monsters might 
not find even a tomb to shelter him. Such was the curse 
of a poet on his former patron, now an object of misery, 
a return for " placing him below Metastasio !" 
* See "Calamities of Authors," pp. 131-139. 



230 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

The French Revolution affords illustrations of the 
worst human passions. When the wretched Collot 
D'Herbois was tossed up in the storm to the summit of 
power, a monstrous imagination seized him ; he project- 
ed razing the city of Lyons and massacring its inhabit- 
ants. He had even the heart to commence, and to con- 
tinue this conspiracy against human nature ; the ostensi- 
ble crime was royalism, but the secret motive is said to 
have been literary vengeance ! As wretched a poet and 
actor as a man, D'Herbois had been hissed off the thea- 
tre at Lyons, and to avenge that ignominy, he had 
meditated over this vast and remorseless crime. Is there 
but one Collot D' Ilerbois in the universe ? 

Long since this was written, a fact has been recorded 
of Chenier, the French dramatic poet, which parallels the 
horrid tale of Collot D'Herbois, which some have been 
willing to doubt from its enormity. It is said, that this 
monster, in the revolutionary period, when he had the 
power to save the life of his brother Andre, while his 
father, prostrate before a wretched son, was imploring 
for the life of an innocent brother, remained silent ; it is 
further said that he appropriated to himself a tragedy 
which he found among his brother's manuscripts. " Fra- 
tricide from literary jealousy," observes the relator of 
this anecdote, "was a crime reserved for a modern 
French revolutionist."* There are some pathetic stan- 
zas which Andre was composing in his last moments, 
when awaiting his fate ; the most pathetic of all stanzas 
is that one which he left unfinished — 

Peut-etre, avant que l'heure en cercle promeneo 

Ait pose, sur l'email brillant, 
Dans les soixante pas ou sa route est bornee, 

Son pied sonore et vigilant, 
Le sommeil du tombeau pressera ma paupi^re — 

* Edinburgh Review, xxx. 159. 



DOMESTIC LIFE. 231 

At this unfinished stanza was the pensive poet sum- 
moned to the guillotine ! 



CHAPTER XVI. 



The domestic life of genius. — Defects of great compositions attributed 
to domestic infelicities. — The home of the literary character should 
be the abode of repose and silence. — Of the Father. — Of the Mother. 
— Of family genius. — Men of genius not more respected than other 
men in their domestic circle. — The cultivators of science and art do 
not meet on equal terms with others, in domestic life. — Their neg- 
lect of those around them. — Often accused of imaginary crimes. 

WHEN the temper and the leisure of the literary char- 
acter are alike broken, even his best works, the too 
faithful mirrors of his state of mind, will participate in 
its inequalities ; and surely the incubations of genius, in 
its delicate and shadowy combinations, are not less sensi- 
ble in their operation than the composition of sonorous 
bodies, where, while the warm metal is settling in the 
mould, even an unusual vibration of the air during the 
moment of fusion will injure the tone. 

Some of the conspicuous blemishes of several great 
compositions may be attributed to the domestic infeli- 
cities of their authors. The desultory life of Camoens 
is imagined to be perceptible in the deficient connexion 
of his epic; and Milton's blindness and divided family 
prevented that castigating criticism, which otherwise 
had erased passages which have escaped from his revis- 
ing hand. He felt himself in the situation of his Samson 
Agonistes, whom he so pathetically describes — 

His foes' derision, captive, poor, and blind. 

Even Locke complains of his " discontinued way of 
writing," and " writing by incoherent parcels," from the 



232 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

avocations of a busy and unsettled life, which undoubt- 
edly produced a deficiency of method in the disposition 
of the materials of his great work. The careless rapid 
lines of Dryden are justly attributed to his distress, and 
indeed he pleads for his inequalities from his domestic- 
circumstances. Johnson often silently, but eagerly, 
corrected the " Ramblers " in their successive editions, 
of which so many had been despatched in haste. The 
learned Greaves offered some excuses for his errors in his 
edition of " Abulfeda," from " his being five years en- 
cumbered with lawsuits, and diverted from his studies." 
When at length he returned to them, he expresses his 
surprise " at the pains he had formerly undergone," but 
of which he now felt himself unwilling, he knew not how, 
of again undergoing." Goldoni, when at the bar, aban- 
doned his comic talent for several years; and having 
resumed it, his first comedy totally failed : " My head," 
says he, "was occupied with my professional employ- 
ment ; I was uneasy in mind and in bad humour." A law- 
suit, a bankruptcy, a domestic feud, or an indulgence in 
criminal or in foolish pursuits, have chilled the fervour 
of imagination, scattered into fragments many a noble 
design, and paralysed the finest genius. The distrac- 
tions of Guido's studies from his passion for gaming, and 
of Parmegiano's for alchemy, have been traced in their 
works, which are often hurried over and unequal. It is 
curious to observe, that Cumberland attributes the excel- 
lence of his comedy, The West Indian, to the peculiarly 
happy situation in which he found himself at the time of 
its composition, free from the incessant avocations which 
had crossed him in the writing of The Brothers. " I was 
master of my time, my mind was free, and I was happy 
in the society of the dearest friends I had on earth. The 
calls of office, the cavillings of angry rivals, and the 
gibings of newspaper critics, could not reach me on the 
banks of the Shannon, where all within-doors was love 



DOMESTIC INFELICITY. 233 

and affection. In no other period of my life have the 
same happy circumstances combined to cheer me in any 
of my literary labours." 

The best years of Mengs' life were embittered by his 
father, a poor artist, and who, with poorer feelings, con- 
verted his home into a prison-house, forced his son into 
the slavery of stipulated task-work, while bread and 
water were the only fruits of the fine arts. In this 
domestic persecution, the son contracted those morose 
and saturnine habits which in after-life marked the char- 
acter of the ungenial Mengs. Alonso Cano, a celebrated 
Spanish painter, would have carried his art to perfection, 
had not the unceasing persecution of the Inquisitors 
entirely deprived him of that tranquillity so necessary to 
the very existence of art. Ovid, in exile on the barren 
shores of Tomos, deserted by his genius, in his copious 
Tristia loses much of the luxuriance of his fancy. 

We have a remarkable evidence of domestic unhappi- 
ness annihilating the very faculty of genius itself, in the 
case of Dr. Brook Taylor, the celebrated author of the 
"Linear Perspective." This great mathematician in 
early life distinguished himself as an inventor in science, 
and the most sanguine hopes of his future discoveries 
were raised both at home and abroad. Two unexpected 
events in domestic life extinguished his inventive facul- 
ties. After the loss of two wives, whom he regarded 
with no common affection, he became unfitted for pro- 
found studies ; he carried his own personal despair into 
his favourite objects of pursuit, and abandoned them. 
The inventor of the most original work suffered the last 
fifteen years of his life to drop away, without hope, and 
without exertion ; nor is this a solitary instance, where 
a man of genius, deprived of the idolised partner of his 
existence, has no longer been able to find an object in his 
studies, and where even fame itself has ceased to in- 
terest. The reason which Rousseau alleges for the cyni- 



23± LITERARY CHARACTER. 

cal spleen which so frequently breathes forth in his 
works, shows how the domestic character of the man of 
genius leaves itself in his productions. After describing 
the infelicity of his domestic affairs, occasioned by the 
mother of Theresa, and Theresa herself, both women of 
the lowest class and the worst dispositions, he adds, on 
this wretched marriage, "These unexpected, disagree- 
able events, in a state of my own choice, plunged me 
into literature, to give a new direction and diversion to 
my mind; and in all my first works I scattered that 
bilious humour which had occasioned this very occupa- 
tion." Our author's character in his works was the 
very opposite to the one in which he appeared to these 
low people. Feeling his degradation among them, for 
they treated his simplicity as utter silliness, his personal 
timidity assumed a tone of boldness and originality in 
his writings, while a strong personal sense of shame 
heightened his causticity, and he delighted to contemn 
that urbanity in which he had never shared, and which 
he knew not how to practise. His miserable subser- 
vience to these people was the real cause of his oppressed 
spirit calling out for some undefined freedom in society ; 
and thus the real Rousseau, with all his disordered feel- 
ings, only appeared in his writings. The secrets of his 
heart were confided to his pen. 

"The painting-room must be like Eden before the 
Fall; no joyless turbulent passions must enter there" — 
exclaims the enthusiast Richardson. The home of the 
literary character should be the abode of repose and of 
silence. There must he look for the feasts of study, in 
progressive and alternate labours ; a taste " which," says 
Gibbon, "I would not exchange for the treasures of 
India." Rousseau had always a work going on, for 
rainy days and spare hours, such as his " Dictionary of 
Music :" a variety of works never tired ; it was the 
single one which exhausted. Metastasio looks with 



LOVE OF LITERARY LABOUR. 235 

delight on his variety, which resembled the fruits in the 
garden of Armida — 

E mentre spunta l'un, l'altro mature. 

"While one matures, the other buds and blows. 

Nor is it always fame, or any lower motive, which 
may induce the literary character to hold an unwearied 
pen. Another equally powerful exists, which must re- 
main inexplicable to him who knows not to escape from 
the listlessness of life — it is the passion for literary occu- 
pation. He whose eye can only measure the space occu- 
pied by the voluminous labours of the elder Pliny, of a 
Mazzuchelli, a Muratori, a Montfaucon, and a Gough, all 
men who laboured from the love of labour, and can see 
nothing in that space but the industry which filled it, is 
like him who only views a city at a distance — the streets 
and the edifices, and all the life and population within, 
he can never know. These literary characters projected 
their works as so many schemes to escape from unin- 
teresting pursuits; and, in these folios, how many evils 
of life did they bury, while their happiness expanded 
with their volume ! Aulus Gellius desired to live no 
longer than he was able to retain the faculty of writing 
and observing. The literary character must grow as 
impassioned with his subject as iElian with his "History 
of Animals ;" " wealth and honour I might have obtained 
at the courts of princes ; but I preferred the delight of 
multiplying my knowledge. I am aware that the avari- 
cious and the ambitious will accuse me of folly ; but I 
have always found most pleasure in observing the nature 
of animals, studying their character, and writing their 
history." 

Even with those who have acquired their celebrity, the 
love of literary labour is not diminished — a circumstance 
recorded by the younger Pliny of Livy. In a preface to 
one of his lost books, that historian had said that he had 



236 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

obtained sufficient glory by his former writings on the 
Roman history, and might now repose in silence ; but his 
mind was so restless and so abhorrent of indolence, that 
it only felt its existence in literary exertion. In a simi- 
lar situation the feeling was fully experienced by - Hume. 
Our philosopher completed his history neither for money 
nor for fame, having then more than a sufficiency of both ; 
but chiefly to indulge a habit as a resource against indo- 
lence.* These are the minds which are without hope if 
they are without occupation. 

Amidst the repose and silence of study, delightful to 
the literary character, are the soothing interruptions of 
the voices of those whom he loves, recalling him from his 
abstractions into social existence. These re-animate his 
languor, and moments of inspiration are caught in the 
emotions of affection, when a father or a friend, a wife, a 
daughter, or a sister, become the participators of his own 
tastes, the companions of his studies, and identify their 
happiness with his fame. A beautiful incident in the do- 
mestic life of literature is one which Morellet has revealed 
of Marmontel. In presenting his collected works to his 
wife, she discovered that the author had dedicated his 
volumes to herself; but the dedication was not made pain- 
ful to her modesty, for it was not a public one. Nor was it 
so concise as to be mistaken for a compliment. The theme 

* This appears in one of his interesting letters first published in the 
Literary Gazette, Oct. 20, 1821. — [It is addressed to Adam Smith, dated 
July 28, 1759, and he says, "I signed an agreement with Mr. Millar, 
where I mention that I proposed to write the History of England from 
the beginning till the accession of Henry VII. ; and he engages to give 
me 1400Z. for the copy. This is the first previous agreement ever I 
made with a bookseller. I shall execute the work at leisure, without 
fatiguing myself by such ardent application as I have hitherto em- 
ployed. It is chiefly as a resource against idleness that I shall under- 
take the work, for as to money I have enough ; and as to reputation 
what I have wrote already will be sufficient, if it be good; if not, it is 
not likely I shall now write better."] 



FAMILY AFFECTION. 237 

was copious, for the heart overflowed in the pages conse- 
crated to her domestic virtues ; and Marmontel left it as a 
record, that their children might learn the gratitude of 
their father, and know the character of their mother, when 
the writer should be no more. Many readers were perhaps 
surprised to find in Nesker's Comte rendu an Hoi, a politi- 
cal and financial work, a great and lovely character of 
domestic excellence in his wife. This was more obtru- 
sive than Marmontel' s private dedication; yet it was not 
the less sincere. If Necker failed in the cautious reserve 
of private feelings, who will censure ? Nothing seems 
misplaced which the heart dictates. 

If Horace were dear to his friends, he declares they 
owed him to his father : — 

purus et insons 
(Ut me collaudem) si vivo et cams amicis, 
Causa fuit Pater his. 

If pure and innocent, if dear (forgive 
These little praises) to my friends I live, 
My father was the cause. 

This intelligent father, an obscure tax-gatherer, discovered 
the propensity of Horace's mind ; for he removed the boy 
of genius from a rural seclusion to the metropolis, anx- 
iously attending on him to his various masters. Grotius, 
like Horace, celebrated in verse his gratitude to his ex- 
cellent father, who h.ad formed him not only to be a man 
of learning, but a great character. Yitruvius pours forth 
a grateful prayer to the memory of his parents, who 
had instilled into his soul a love for literary and philo- 
sophical subjects ; and it is an amiable trait in Plutarch 
to have introduced his father in the Symposiacs, as an 
elegant critic and moralist, and his brother Lamprias, 
whose sweetness of disposition, inclining to cheerful rail- 
lery, the Sage of Cheronrea has immortalised. The father 
of Gibbon urged him to literary distinction, and the 



238 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

dedication of the "Essay on Literature" to that flather, 
connected with his subsequent labour, shows the [force 
of the excitement. The father of Pope lived long enough 
to witness his son's celebrity. 

Tears such as tender fathers shed, 

"Warm from my eyes descend, 
For joy, to think when I am dead, 

My son shall have mankind his Friend.* 

The son of Buflbn one day surprised his father b 
sight of a column, which he had raised to the memoi 

his father's eloquent genius. "It will do you bono 
observed the Gallic sage.f And when that son in 
revolution was led to the guillotine, he ascended Un 
silence, so impressed with his father's fame, that he only 
told the people, " I am the son of Buffon !" 

Fathers absorbed in their occupations can but rarely 
attract their offspring. The first durable impressions of 
our moral existence come from the mother. The first 
prudential wisdom to which Genius listens falls from her 
lips, and only her caresses can create the moments of ten- 
derness. The earnest discernment of a mother's love sur- 
vives in the imagination of manhood. The mother of 
Sir "William Jones, having formed a plan for the educa- 
tion of her son, withdrew from great connexions that she 
might live only for that son. Her great principle of edu- 
cation, was to excite by curiosity; the result could not fail 
to be knowledge. " Read, and you will know," she con- 
stantly replied to her filial pupil. And we have his own 
acknowledgment, that to this maxim, which produced 
the habit of study, he was indebted for his future attain- 
ments. Kant, the German metaphysician, was always 

* These lines have been happily applied by Mr. Bowles to the father 
of Pope. — The poet's domestic affections were as permanent as they 
were strong. 

f It still exists in the gardens of the old chateau at Montbard. It 
is a pillar of marble bearing this inscription : — " Excelsae turris humilis 
columna, Parenti suo films Buflbn. 1785."— Ed. 



FAMILY AFFECTION. 239 

fond of declaring that he owed to the ascendancy of his 
mother's character the severe inflexibility of his moral 
principles. The mother of Burns kindled his genius by 
reciting the old Scottish ballads, while to his father he 
attributed his less pleasing cast of character. Bishop 
Watson traced to the affectionate influence of his mother, 
the religious feelings which he confesses he inherited 
from her. The mother of Edgeworth, confined through 
life to her apartment, was the only person who studied 
his constitutional volatility. When he hastened to her 
death-bed, the last imperfect accents of that beloved 
voice reminded him of the past and warned him of the 
future, and he declares that voice "had a happy influ- 
ence on his habits," — as happy, at least, as his own vola- 
tile nature would allow. " To the manner in which my 
mother formed me at an early age," said Napoleon, " I 
principally owe my subsequent elevation. My opinion 
is, that the future good or bad conduct of a child en- 
tirely depends upon the mother." 

There is this remarkable in the strong affections of the 
mother in the formation of the literary character, that, 
without even partaking of, or sympathising with the 
pleasures the child is fond of, the mother will often cher- 
ish those first decided tastes merely from the delight of 
promoting the happiness of her son ; so that that genius, 
which some would produce on a preconceived system, or 
implant by stratagem, or enforce by application, with her 
may be only the watchful labour of love.* One of our 
most eminent antiquaries has often assured me that his 
great passion, and I may say his genius, for his curious 

* Kotzebue has noted the delicate attention of his mother in not only 
fostering his genius, but in watching its too rapid development. He 
says: — "If at any time my imagination was overheated, my mother 
always contrived to select something for my evening reading which 
might moderate this ardour, and make a gentler impression on my too 
irritable fancy." — Ed. 



240 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

knowledge and his vast researches, he attributes to ma- 
ternal affection. When his early taste for these studies 
was thwarted by the very different one of his father, the 
mother silently supplied her son with the sort of treas- 
ures he languished for, blessing the knowledge, which 
indeed she could not share with him, but which she 
beheld imparting happiness to her youthful antiquary. 

There is, what may be called, family genius. In the 
home of a man of genius is diffused an electrical atmos- 
phere, and his own pre-eminence strikes out talents in 
all. "The active pursuits of my father," says the daugh- 
ter of Edgeworth, "spread an animation through the 
house by connecting children with all that was going on, 
and allowing them to join in thought and conversation ; 
sympathy and emulation excited mental exertion in the 
most agreeable manner." Evelyn, in his beautiful retreat 
at Saye's Court, had inspired his family with that variety 
of taste which he himself was spreading throughout the 
nation. His son translated Rapin's " Gardens," which 
poem the father proudly preserved in his " Sylva ;" his 
lady, ever busied in his study, excelled in the arts her 
husband loved, and designed the frontispiece to his 
"Lucretius:" she was the cultivator of their celebrated 
garden, which served as " an example " of his great 
work on "forest trees." Cowley, who has commemo- 
rated Evelyn's love of books and gardens, has delight- 
fully applied them to his lady, in whom, says the bard, 
Evelyn meets both pleasures : — 

The fairest garden in her looks, 
And in her mind the wisest books, 

The house of Haller resembled a temple consecrated to 
science and the arts, and the votaries were his own 
family. The universal acquirements of Haller were 
possessed in some degree by every one under his roof; 
and their studious delight in transcribing manuscripts, 



FAMILY AFFECTION. 241 

in consulting authors, in botanising, drawing and colour- 
ing the plants under his eye, formed occupations which 
made the daughters happy and the sons eminent.* The 
painter Stella inspired his family to copy his fanciful in- 
ventions, and the playful graver of Claudine Stella, his 
niece, animated his " Sports of Children." I have seen 
a print of Coypel in his studio, and by his side his little 
daughter, who is intensely watching the progress of her 
father's pencil. The artist has represented himself in 
the act of suspending his labour to look on his child. 
At that moment, his thoughts were divided between 
two objects of his love. The character and the works 
of the late Elizabeth Hamilton were formed entirely by 
her brother. Admiring the man she loved, she imitated 
what she admired ; and while the brother was arduously 
completing the version of the Persian Hedaya, the sister, 
who had associated with his morning tasks and his even- 
ing conversations, was recalling all the ideas, and pour- 
traying her fraternal master in her " Hindoo Rajah." 

Nor are there wanting instances where this family 
genius has been carried down through successive gen- 
erations : the volume of the father has been continued 
by a son, or a relative. The history of the family of the 
Zwingers- is a combination of studies and inherited 
tastes. Theodore published, in 1697, a folio herbal, of 
which his son Frederic gave an enlarged edition in 1744 ; 
and the family was honoured by their name having been 
given to a genus of plants dedicated to their memory, 
and known in botany by the name of the Zwingera. In 
history and in literature, the family name was equally 

* Hallers death (a. d. 1777) was as remarkable for its calm philoso- 
phy, as his life for its happiness. He was a professional surgeon, and 
continued to the last an attentive and rational observer of the symp- 
toms of the disease which was bringing him to the grave. He trans- 
mitted to the University of Gottingen a scientific analysis of his case r 
and died feeling his own pulse. — Ed. 
]6 



242 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

eminent; the same Theodore continued a great work, 
"The Theatre of Human Life," which had been begun 
by his father-in-law, and which for the third time 
enlarged by another son. Among the historians of Italy, 
it is delightful to contemplate this family genius trans- 
mitting itself with unsullied probity among the three 
Villains, and the Malaspinis, and the two Porta*. The 
history of the learned family of the Stephens presents a 
dynasty of literature ; and to distinguish the numerous 
members, they have been designated as Henry I. and 
Henry II.,— as Robert I., the II., and the III.* Our 
country may exult in having possessed many literary 
families — the Wartons, the father and two sons : the 
Burneys, more in number; and the nephews of Milton, 
whose humble toreh at least was lighted at the altar of 
the great bard.f 

No event in literary history is more impressive than 
the fate of Quintilian ; it was in the midst of his elaborate 
work, which was composed to form the literary character 
of a son, that he experienced the most terrible affliction 
in the domestic life of genius — the successive deaths 
of his wife and his only child. It was a moral earth- 
quake with a single survivor amidst the ruins. An awful 
burst of parental and literary affliction breaks forth in 
Quintilian's lamentation, — " My wealth, and my writings 
the fruits of a long and painful life, must now be re- 
served only for strangers ; all I possess is for aliens, and 
no longer mine !" We feel the united agony of the hus- 
band, the father, and the man of genius ! 

Deprived of these social consolations, we see Johnson 
call about him those whose calamities exiled them from 
society, and his roof lodges the blind, the lame and the 



* For an account of them and their works, see " Curiosities of Liter- 
ature, 1 ' vol. i., p. 76, 
f The Phillips. 



PUBLIC AND PKIYATE LIFE. 9^3 

poor for the heart must possess something it can call its 
own, to be kind to. 

In domestic life, the Abbe De St. Pierre enlarged its 
moral vocabulary, by fixing in his language two signifi- 
cant words. One served to explain the virtue most 
familiar to him Menfaisance ; and that irritable vanity 
which magnifies its ephemeral fame, the sage reduced 
to a mortifying diminutive — la gloriole ! 

It has often excited surprise that men of genius are 
not more reverenced than other men in their domestic 
circle. The disparity between the public and the pri- 
vate esteem of the same man is often striking. In 
privacy we discover that the comic genius is not always 
cheerful, that the sage is sometimes ridiculous, and the 
poet seldom delightful. The golden hour of invention 
must terminate like other hours, and when the man of 
genius returns to the cares, the duties, the vexations, 
and the amusements of life, his companions behold him as 
one of themselves — the creature of habits and infirmities. 

In the business of life, the cultivators of science and 
the arts, with all their simplicity of feeling, and gener- 
ous openness about them, do not meet on equal terms 
with other men. Their frequent abstractions calling off 
the mind to whatever enters into its lonely pursuits, 
render them greatly inferior to others in practical and 
immediate observation. Studious men have been re- 
proached as being so deficient in the knowledge of the 
human character, that they are usually disqualified for 
the management of public business. Their confidence 
in their friends has no bound, while they become the 
easy dupes of the designing. A friend, who was in 
office with the late Mr. Cumberland, assures me that he 
was so intractable to the forms of business, and so easily 
induced to do more or to do less than he ought, that 
he was compelled to perform the official business of this 
literary man, to free himself from his annoyance ; and 



244 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

yet Cumberland could not be reproached with any 
deficiency in a knowledge of the human character, 
which he was always touching with caustic pleasantry. 

Addison and Prior were unskilful statesmen; and 
Maleshcrbes confessed, a few days before his death, that 
Turgot and himself, men of genius and philosophers, 
from whom the nation had expected much, had badly 
administered the atVairs of the state; for "knowing men 
but by books, and unskilful in business, we could not 
form the king to the government." A man of genius 
may know the whole map of the world of human nature; 
but, like the great geographer, may be apt to be lost in 
the wood which any one in the neighbourhood knows 
better than him. 

" The conversation of a poet," says Goldsmith, " is that 
of a man of sense, while his actions are those of a fool." 
Genius, careless of the future, and often absent in the 
present, avoids too deep a commingling in the minor 
cares of life. Hence it becomes a victim to common 
fools and vulgar villains. " I love my family's welfare, 
but I cannot be so foolish as to make myself the slave 
to the minute affairs of a house," said Montesquieu. 
The story told of a man of learning is probably true, 
however ridiculous it may appear. Deeply occupied in 
his library, one, rushing in, informed him that the house 
was on fire : " Go to my wife — these matters belong to 
her !" pettishly replied the interrupted student. Bacon 
sat at one end of his table wrapt in many a reverie, 
while at the other the creatures about him were traffick- 
ing with his honour, and ruining his good name : " I 
am better fitted for this," said that great man once, 
holding out a book, " than for the life I have of late led. 
Nature has not fitted me for that ; knowing myself by 
inward calling to be fitter to hold a book than to play 
a part." 

Buffon, who consumed his mornings in his old tower of 



DOMESTIC LIFE. 245 

Montbard, at the end of his garden,* with all nature open- 
ing to him, formed all his ideas of what was passing before 
him from the arts of a pliant Capuchin, and the com- 
ments of a perruquier on the scandalous chronicle of the 
village. These humble confidants he treated as chil- 
dren, but the children were commanding the great man ! 
Young, whose satires give the very anatomy of human 
foibles, was wholly governed by his housekeeper. She 
thought and acted for him, which probably greatly as- 
sisted, the " Night Thoughts," but his curate exposed the 
domestic economy of a man of genius by a satirical novel. 
If I am truly informed, in that gallery of satirical portraits 
in his "Love of Fame," Young has omitted one of the 
most striking — his own! While the poet's eye was 
glancing from " earth to heaven," he totally overlooked 
the lady whom he married, and who soon became the 
object of his contempt ; and not only his wife, but his 
only son, who when he returned home for the vacation 
from Winchester school, was only admitted into the 
presence of his poetical father on the first and the last 
day ; and whose unhappy life is attributed to this un- 
natural neglect : f — a lamentable domestic catastrophe, 
which-, I fear, has too frequently occurred amidst the 
ardour and occupations of literary glory. Much, too 
much, of the tender domesticity of life is violated by 
literary characters. All that lives under their eye, all 
that should be guided by their hand, the recluse and 
abstracted men of genius must leave to their own direc- 
tion. But let it not be forgotten, that, if such neglect 
others, they also neglect themselves, and are deprived 

* For some account of this place, see the chapter on " Literary Kesi- 
dences" in vol. hi., p. 395, of "Curiosities of Literature." 

f These facts are drawn from a manuscript of the late Sir Herbert 
Croft, who regretted that Dr. Johnson would not suffer bim to give 
this account during the doctor's lifetime, in his Life of Young, but 
which it had always been his intention to have added to it. 



•246 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

of those family enjoyments for which few men have 
wanner sympathies. While the literary character burns 
with the ambition of raising a great literary name, he 
is too often forbidden to taste of this domestic inter- 
course, or to indulge the versatile curiosity of his pri- 
vate amusements — for he is chained to his great labour. 
Robertson felt this while employed on his histories, and 
lie at length rejoiced when, after many years of devoted 
toil, he returned to the luxury of reading for his own 
amusement and to the conversation of his friends. " Such 
a sacrifice,'' observes his philosophical biographer, "must 
be more or less made by all who devote themselves to 
letters, whether with a view to emolument or to fame; 
nor would it perhaps be easy to make it, were it not for 
the prospect (seldom, alas ! realised) of earning by their 
exertions that learned and honourable leisure which he 
was so fortunate as to attain." 

But men of genius have often been accused of imaginary 
crimes. Their very eminence attracts the lie of calumny, 
which tradition often conveys beyond the possibility of 
refutation. Sometimes they are reproached as wanting 
in affection, when they displease their fathers by making 
an obscure name celebrated. The family of Descartes 
lamented, as a blot in their escutcheon, that Descartes, 
who was born a gentleman, should become a philosopher ; 
and this elevated genius was refused the satisfaction of 
embracing an unforgiving parent, while his dwarfish bro- 
ther, with a mind diminutive as his person, ridiculed his 
philosophic relative, and turned to advantage his philo- 
sophic disposition. The daughter of Addison was edu- 
cated with a perfect contempt of authors, and blushed to 
bear a name more illustrious than that of all the "War- 
wicks, on her alliance to which noble family she prided 
herself. The children of Milton, far from solacing the 
age of their blind parent, became impatient for his death, 
embittered his last hours with scorn and disaffection, and 



LITERARY POVERTY. 247 

combined to cheat and rob him. Milton, having enriched 
our national poetry by two immortal epics, with patient 
grief blessed the single female, who did not entirely aban- 
don him, and the obscure fanatic who was pleased with 
his poems because they were religious. What felicities ! 
what laurels ! And now we have recently learned, that 
the daughter of Madame de Sevigne lived on ill terms 
with her mother, of whose enchanting genius she appears 
to have been insensible ! The unquestionable documents 
are two letters hitherto cautiously secreted. The daugh- 
ter was in the house of her mother, when an extraordinary 
letter was addressed to her from the chamber of Madame 
de Sevigne after a sleepless night. In this she describes, 
with her peculiar felicity, the ill-treatment she received 
from the daughter she idolised ; it is a kindling effusion 
of maternal reproach, and tenderness, and genius.* 

Some have been deemed disagreeable companions, be- 
cause they felt the weariness of dulness, or the imperti- 
nence of intrusion; described as bad husbands, when 
united to women who, without a kindred feeling, had the 
mean art to prey upon their infirmities ; or as bad fathers, 
because their offspring have not always reflected the 
moral beauty of their own page. But the magnet loses 
nothing of its virtue, even when the particles about it, 
incapable themselves of being attracted, are not acted 
on by its occult property. 



CHAPTER XVII, 



The poverty of Literary men. — Poverty, a relative quality. — Of the 
poverty of literary men in what degree desirable. — Extreme poverty. 
— Task-work. — Of gratuitous works. — A project to provide against the 
worst state of poverty among literary men. 

POVERTY is a state not so fatal to genius, as it is 
usually conceived to be. We shall find that it has 

* Lettres inedites de Madame de Sevigne, pp. 201 and 203. 



248 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

been sometimes voluntarily chosen; and that to connect 
too closely great fortune with great genius, creates one 
of those powerful but unhappy alliances, where the one 
party must necessarily act contrary to the interests of 
the other. 

Poverty is a relative quality, like cold and heat, which 
arc but the increase or the diminution in our own sensa- 
tions. The positive idea must arise from comparison. 
There is a state of poverty reserved even for the wealthy 
man, the instant that he comes in hateful contact with 

> the enormous capitalist. But there is a poverty neither 
vulgar nor terrifying, asking no favours, and on no terms 
receiving any ; a poverty which annihilates its ideal evils; 
and, becoming even a source of pride, will confer inde- 

« pendence, that first step to genius. 

Among the continental nations, to accumulate wealth, 
in the spirit of a capitalist does not seem to form the 
prime object of domestic life. The traffic of money is 
with them left to the traffickers, their merchants, and 
their financiers. In our country the commercial character 
has so closely interwoven and identified itself with the 
national one, and its peculiar views have so terminated 
all our pursuits, that every rank is alike influenced by its 
spirit, and things are valued by a market-price which natu- 
rally admits of no such appraisement. In a country where 
" The Wealth of Nations" has been fixed as the first 
principle of political existence, wealth has raised an aris- 
tocracy more noble than nobility, more celebrated than 
genius, more popular than patriotism ; but however it 
may partake at times of a generous nature, it hardly looks 
beyond its own narrow pale. It is curious to notice that 
Montesquieu, who was in England, observed, that " If I 
had been born here, nothing could have consoled me in 
failing to accumulate a large fortune ; but I do not lament 
the mediocrity of my circumstances in France." The 
sources of our national wealth have greatly multiplied, 



LITERARY POVERTY. 249 

and the evil has consequently increased, since the visit 
of the great philosopher. 

The cares of property, the daily concerns of a family, 
the pressure of such minute disturbers of their studies, 
have induced some great minds to regret the abolition 
of those monastic orders, beneath whose undisturbed 
shade were produced the mighty labours of a Montfaucon, 
a Calmet, a Florez, and the still unfinished volumes of 
the Benedictines. Often has the literary character, 
amidst the busied delights of study, sighed "to bid a 
farewell sweet " to the turbulence of society. It was not 
discontent, nor any undervaluing of general society, *but 
the pure enthusiasm of the library, which once induced 
the studious Evelyn to sketch a retreat of this nature, 
which he addressed to his friend, the illustrious Boyle. 
He proposed to form " A college where persons of the 
same turn of mind might enjoy the pleasure of agreeable 
society, and at the same time pass their days without 
care or interruption."* This abandonment of their life 
to their genius has, indeed, often cost them too dear, from 
the days of Sophocles, who, ardent in his old age, ne- 
glected his family affairs, and was brought before his 
judges by his relations, as one fallen into a second child- 
hood. The aged poet brought but one solitary witness 
in his favour — an unfinished tragedy; which having 
read, the judges rose before him, and retorted the charge 
on his accusers. 

A parallel circumstance occurred to the Abbe Cotin, 
the victim of a rhyme of the satirical Boileau. Studious, 

* This romantic literary retreat is one of those delightful reveries 
which the elegant taste of Evelyn abounded with. It may be found 
at full length in the fifth volume of Boyle's Works, not in the second, 
as the Biog. Brit. says. His lady was to live among the society. "If 
I and my wife take up two apartments, for we are to be decently asun- 
der, however I stipulate, and her inclination will greatly suit with it, 
that shall be no impediment to the society, but a considerable advan- 
tage to the economic part," &c. 



250 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

and without fortune, Cotin had lived contented till he 
incurred the unhappiness of inheriting a large estate. 
Then a world of cares opened on him ; hisrcni- were not 
paid, and his ereditora increased. Dragged from his 

Hebrew and Greek, poor Cotin resolved to make over his 
entire fortune to one of his heirs, on condition of mainte- 
nance. His other relatione assuming that a man who 
parted with his estate in his lifetime must necessarily be 
deranged, brought the Learned Cotin into court. Colin 
had nothing to say in his own favour, but requested his 
judges would allow him to address them from the s< r- 
mons which he preached. The good sense, the sound 
reasoning, and the erudition of the preacher were such, 
that the whole bench unanimously declared that they 
themselves might be considered as madmen, were they 
to condemn a man of letters who was desirous of escaping 
from the incumbrance of a fortune which had only inter- 
rupted his studies. 

There may then be sufficient motives to induce such a 
man to make a state of mediocrity his choice. If he lose 
his happiness, he mutilates his genius. Goldoni, with all 
the simplicity of his feelings and habits, in reviewing his 
life, tells us how he was always relapsing into his old 
propensity of comic writing ; " but the thought of this 
does not disturb me," says he ; " for though in any other 
situation I might have been in easier circumstances, I 
should never have been so happy." Bayle is a parent 
of the modern literary character ; he pursued the same 
course, and early in life adopted the principle, " Neither 
to fear bad fortune nor have any ardent desires for good." 
Acquainted with the passions only as their historian, and 
living only for literature, he sacrificed to it the two great 
acquisitions of human pursuits — fortune and a family: 
but in what country had Bayle not a family and a pos- 
session in his fame ? Hume and Gibbon had the most 
perfect conception of the literary character, and they 



LITERARY POVERTY. 251 

were aware of this important principle in its habits — 
" My own revenue," said Hume, " will be sufficient for a 
man of letters, who surely needs less money, both for his 
entertainment and credit, than other people." Gibbon 
observed of himself—" Perhaps the golden mediocrity 
of my fortune has contributed to fortify my application." 
The state of poverty, then, desirable in the domestic 
life of genius, is one in which the cares of property 
, never intrude, and the want of wealth is never perceived. * 
This is not indigence ; that state which, however digni- 
fied the man of genius himself may be, must inevitably 
degrade ! for the heartless will gibe, and even the com- 
passionate turn aside with contempt. This literary out- 
cast will soon be forsaken even by himself! his own 
intellect will be clouded over, and his limbs shrink in the 
palsy of bodily misery and shame — 

Malesuada Fames, et turpis Egestas 
Terribiles visu formse. 

Not that in this history of men of genius we are with- 
out illustrious examples of those who have even learnt 
to wa?it, that they might emancipate their genius from 
their necessities ! 

We see Rousseau rushing out of the palace of the 
financier, selling his watch", copying music by the sheet, 
and by the mechanical industry of two hours, purchasing 
ten for genius. We may smile at the enthusiasm of 
young Barry, who finding himself too constant a haunter 
of taverns, imagined that this expenditure of time was 
occasioned by having money ; and to put an end to the 
conflict, he threw the little he possessed at once into the 
Liffey ; but let us not forget that Barry, in the maturity 
of life, confidently began a labour of years,* and one of 
the noblest inventions in his art — a great poem in a pic- 

* His series of pictures for the walls of the meeting-room of the 
Society of "Arts in the Adelphi. — Ed. 



252 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

tun — with no other resource than what he found by 
secret labours through the night, in furnishing the shops 
-with those slight and rateable sketches which secured 

uninterrupted mornings for his genius. Spinosa, a name 
as celebrated, and perhaps as calumniated, as Epicurus, 
lived in all sorts of abstinence, even of honours, of pen- 
sions, and of presents; which, however disguised by- 
kindness, he would not accept, so fearful was this philoso- 
pher of a chain ! Lodging in a cottage and obtaining a 
livelihood by polishing optical glasses, he declared that 
he had never spent more than he earned, and certainly 
thought that there was Buch a thing as superfluous earn- 
ings. At his death his small accounts showed how he 
had subsisted on a few pence a-day, and 

Enjoy'd, spare feast! a radish and an egg. 

Poussin persisted in refusing a higher price than that 
affixed to the back of his pictures, at the time he was 
living without a domestic. The great oriental scholar, 
Anquetil de Perron, is a recent example of the literary 
character carrying his indifference to privations to the 
very cynicism of poverty ; and he seems to exult over his 
destitution with the same pride as others would expatiate 
over their possessions. Yet we must not forget, to use 
the words of Lord Bacon, that "judging that means were 
to be spent upon learning, and not learning to be applied 
to means," De Perron refused the offer of thirty thousand 
livres for his copy of the " Zend-avesta." Writing 
to some Bramins, he describes his life at Paris to be 
much like their own. " I subsist on the produce of my 
literary labours without revenue, establishment, or place. 
I have no wife nor children ; alone, absolutely free, but 
always the friend of men of probity. In a perpetual 
war with my senses, I triumph over the attractions of 
the world or I contemn them." 

This ascetic existence is not singular. Parini, a great 



LITERARY POVERTY. 253 

modern poet of Italy, whom the Milanese point out to 
strangers as the glory of their city, lived in the same 
state of unrepining poverty. Mr. Hobhonse has given 
us this self-portrait of the poet : — 

Me, non nato a percotere 
Le dure illustri porte, 
Nudo accorra, ma libero 
II regno della morte. 

Naked, but free ! A life of hard deprivations was 
long that of the illustrious Linnseus. Without fortune, 
to that great mind it never seemed necessary to acquire 
any. Peregrinating on foot with a stylus, a magnifying- 
- glass, and a basket for plants, he shared the rustic meal 
of the peasant. Never was glory obtained at a cheaper 
rate ! exclaims one of his eulogists. Satisfied with the 
least of the little, he only felt one perpetual want — that 
of completing his Flors. Not that Linnseus was insensi- 
ble to his situation, for he gave his name to a little flower 
in Lapland — the JLinnoea JBorealis, from the fanciful 
analogy he discovered between its character and his own 
early fate, " a little northern plant flowering early, de- 
pressed, abject, and long overlooked." The want of 
fortune, however, did not deprive this man of genius of 
his true glory, nor of that statue raised to him in the 
gardens of the University of Upsal, nor of that solemn 
eulogy delivered by a crowned head, nor of those medals 
which his nation struck to commemorate the genius of 
the three kingdoms of nature ! 

This, then, is the race who have often smiled at the 
light regard of their good neighbours when contrasted 
with their own celebrity ; for in poverty and in solitude 
such men are not separated from their fame ; that is ever 
proceeding, ever raising a secret, but constant, triumph 
in their minds.* 

* Spagnoletto, while sign-painting at Rome, attracted by his ability 
the notice of a cardinal, who ultimately gave him a home in his 



254 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

Yes! Genius, undegraded and unexhausted, may in- 
deed even in b garret glow in its career; but it must be 
on the principle which induced Rousseau solemnly to re- 
nounce writing "par mktier" This in the Journal d\ 
Spavans he dnce attempted, but found himself quite 
inadequate to " the profession."* In a garret, the author 
of the "Studies of Nature," as he exultingly tells us, 
arranged his work. k * It was in a little garret, in the 
new street of St. Btienne du Mont, where I resided lour 

years, in the midst of physical and domestic afflictions. 
But there I enjoyed the most exquisite pleasures of my 

lite, amid profound solitude and an enchanting horizon. 
There I put the finishing hand to my 'Studies of 

Nature,' and there I published them." Tope, one day 

taking his usual walk with Ilarte in the Ilaymarket, 
desired him to enter a little shop, where going up three 
pair of stairs into a small room, Pope said, " In this 
garret Addison wrote his * Campaign !' " To the feel- 
ings of the poet this garret had become a consecrated 
spot ; Genius seemed more itself, placed in contrast with 
its miserable locality ! 

The man of genius wrestling with oppressive fortune, 
who follows the avocations of an author as a precarious 
source of existence, should take as the model of the 
authorial life, that of Dr. Johnson. The dignity of the 
literary character was as deeply associated with his feel- 
ings, and the "reverence thyself" as present to his mind, 
when doomed to be one of the Helots of literature, by 
Osborn, Cave, and Miller, as when, in the honest triumph 
of Genius, he repelled a tardy adulation of the lordly 
Chesterfield. Destitute of this ennobling principle, the 

palace ; but the artist, feeling that his poverty was necessary to his 
industry and independence, fled to Naples, and recommenced a life of 
labour. — Ed. 

* Twice he repeated this resolution. See his Works, vol. xxxi., p. 
283 ; vol. xxxii., p. 90. 



INFLUENCE OF NECESSITY. 255 

author sinks into the tribe of those rabid adventurers of 
the pen who have masked the degraded form of the 
literary character under the assumed title of " authors by 
profession"* — the Guthries, the Ralphs, and the Am- 
hursts.f There are worse evils for the literary man," 
says a living author, who himself is the true model of the 
great literary character, "than neglect, poverty, im- 
prisonment, and death. There are even more pitiable 
objects than Chatterton himself with the poison at his 
•lips." " I should die with hunger were I at peace with 
the world !" exclaimed a corsair of literature — and 
dashed his pen into the black flood before him of soot 
and gall. 

In substituting fortune for the object of his designs, 
the man of genius deprives himself of those heats of in- 
spiration reserved for him who lives for himself; the 
mollia tempora fandi of Art. If he be subservient to 
the public taste, without daring to raise it to his own, 
the creature of his times has not the choice of his sub- 
jects, which choice is itself a sort of invention. A task- 
worker ceases to think his own thoughts. The stipulated 
price and time are weighing on his pen or his pencil, 
while the hour-glass is dropping its hasty sands. If the 
man of genius would be wealthy and even luxurious, 
another fever besides the thirst of glory torments him. 
Such insatiable desires create many fears, and a mind in 
fear is a mind in slavery. In one of Shakspeare's son- 
nets he pathetically laments this compulsion of his neces- 
sities which forced him to the trade of pleasing the 
•public; and he illustrates this degradation by a novel 
image. " Chide Fortune," cries the bard, — 

* From an original letter which I haye published from Guthrie to a 
minister of state, this modern phrase appears to have been his own 
invention. The principle unblushingb/ avowed, required the sanction 
of a respectable designation. I have preserved it in " Calamities of 
Authors." 

f For some account of these men, see " Calamities of Authors." 



256 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

The guilty goddess of my harmless deeds, 
That did not better for my life provide 
Than public means which public manner! breeds; 
Thence comes it that my name receives a brand; 

.' thence my nature is subdued 
To what it works in, like Tin: dyer's hand. 

Such is the fate of thai author, who, in his variety of 
task-works, blue, yellow, and red, lives without i 
baying Bhown his own natural complexion. We hear 
the eloquent truth from one who lias alike shared in the 
bliss of composition, and the misery of its "daily bread.' 1 
"A single hoar of composition won from the busines 
the day, is worth more than the whole day's toil of* him 
who works at the trade of literature * in the one case, the 
Bpirit comes joyfully to refresh itself, like a hart to the 
waterbrooks; in the other, it pursues Its miserable way, 
panting and jaded, with the dogs of hunger and necessity 
behind."* We trace the fate of all task-work in the his- 
tory of Poussin, when called on to reside at the French 
court. Labouring without intermission, sometimes on 
one thing and sometimes on another, and hurried on in 
things which required both time and thought, he saw too 
clearly the fatal tendency of such a life, and exclaimed, 
with ill-suppressed bitterness, " If I stay long in this 
country, I shall turn dauber like the rest here." The 
great artist abruptly returned to Rome to regain the 
possession of his own thoughts. 

It has been a question with some, more indeed abroad 
than at home, whether the art of instructing mankind by 
the press would not be less suspicious in its character, 
were it less interested in one of its prevalent motives ? 
Some noble self-denials of this kind are recorded. The 
principle of emolument will produce the industry which 
furnishes works for j>opular demand ; but it is only the 
principle of honour which can produce the lasting works 

* Quarterly Review, vol. viii., p. 538. 



BOOKSELLERS' PATRONAGE. 257 

of genius. Boileau seems to censure Racine for having 
accepted money for one of his dramas, while he, who was 
not rich, gave away his polished poems to the public. 
He seems desirous of raising the art of writing to a more 
disinterested profession than any other, requiring no 
fees for the professors. Olivet presented his elaborate 
edition of Cicero to the world, requiring no other remu- 
neration than its glory. Milton did not compose his im- 
mortal work for his trivial copyright ;* and Linnaeus sold 
his labours for a single ducat. The Abbe Mably, the 
author of many political and moral works, lived on little, 
and would accept only a few presentation copies from the 
booksellers. But, since we have become a nation of 
book-collectors, and since there exists, as Mr. Coleridge 
describes it, " a reading public," this principle of honour 
is altered. "Wealthy and even noble authors are proud 
to receive the largest tribute to their genius, because 
this tribute is the certain evidence of the number who 
pay it. The property of a book, therefore, represents to 
the literary candidate the collective force of the thousands 
of voters on whose favour his claims can only exist. 
This change in the affairs of the literary republic in our 
country was felt by Gibbon, who has fixed on " the pa- 
tronage of booksellers " as the standard of public opinion : 
" the measure of their liberality," he says, " is the least 
ambiguous test of our common success." The philoso- 
pher accepted it as a substitute for that " friendship or 
favour of princes, of which he could not boast." The 
same opinion was held by Johnson. Yet, looking on 
the present state of English literature, the most profuse 

* The agreement made with Simmons, the publisher, waS 5?. down, 
and 5Z. more when 1500 copies were sold, the same sum to be paid for 
the second and third editions, each of the same number of copies. 
Milton only lived during the publication of two editions, and his widow 
parted with all her right in the work to the same bookseller for eight 
pounds. Her autograph receipt was in the possession of the late Daw- 
son Turner. — Ed. 
11 



258 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

perhaps in Europe, ire cannot refrain from thinking that 
the " patronage of booksellers " is frequently injurious to 
the great interests of literature. 
The dealers in enormous speculative purchases are 

only subservient to the spirit of tin- times. If they are 
tin- purveyors, they are also the panders of public t:i 
and their vaunted patronage only extends to popular 
subjects: wliile their urgent demands are sure to produce 
hasty manufactures, A precious work on a recondite 
subject, which may have Consumed the life of its author, 
no bookseller can patronise; and whenever such a work 
is published, the author has rarely survived the long 
6eason of the public's neglect. While popular works, 
after some few years of celebrity, have at length been 
discovered not worth the repairs nor the renewal of their 
lease of fame, the neglected work of a nobler design rises 
in value and rarity. The literary work which requires 
the greatest skill and difficulty, and the longest labour, 
is not commercially valued with that hasty, spurious 
novelty, for which the taste of the public is craving, from 
the strength of its disease rather than of its appetite. 
Rousseau observed, that his musical opera, the work of 
five or six weeks, brought him as much money as he had 
received for his "Emile," which had cost him twenty 
years of meditation, and three years of composition. 
This single fact represents a hundred. So fallacious are 
public opinion and the patronage of booksellers ! 

Such, then, is the inadequate remuneration of a life 
devoted to literature ; and notwithstanding the more 
general interest excited by its productions within the 
last century, it has not essentially altered their situation 
in society ; for who is deceived by the trivial exultation 
of the gay sparkling scribbler who lately assured us that 
authors now dip their pens in silver ink-standishes, and 
have a valet for an amanuensis? Fashionable writers 
must necessarily get out of fashion ; it is the inevitable fate 



BOOKSELLERS' PATRONAGE. 959 

of the material and the manufacturer. An eleemosynary 
fund can provide no permanent relief for the age and sor- 
rows of the unhappy men of science and literature ; and 
an author may even have composed a work which shall be 
read by the next generation as well as the present, and 
still be left in a state even of pauperism. These victims 
perish in silence ! No one has attempted to suggest even 
a palliative for this great evil; and when I asked the 
greatest genius of our age to propose some relief for this 
general suffering, a sad and convulsive nod, a shrug that 
sympathised with the misery of so many brothers, and 
an avowal that even he could not invent one, was all that 
genius had to alleviate the forlorn state of the literary 
character.* 

The only man of genius who has thrown out a hint for 
improving the situation of the literary man is Adam 
Smith. In that passage in his " Wealth of Nations " to 
which I have already referred, he says, that " Before the 
invention of the art of printing, the only employment by 
which a man of letters could make anything by his tal- 
ents was that of a public or a private teacher, or by com- 
municating to other people the various and useful knowl- 
edge which he had acquired himself; and this surely is a 
more honourable, a more useful, and in general even a 
more profitable employment than that other of icriting 
for a bookseller, to which the art of printing has given 
occasion." We see the political economist, alike insensi- 
ble to the dignity of the literary character, incapable of 
taking a just view of its glorious avocation. To obviate 
the personal wants attached to the occupations of an 
author, he would, more effectually than skilfully, get rid 
of authorship itself. This is not to restore the limb, but 
to amputate it. It is not the preservation of existence, 

* It was the late Sir "Walter Scott — if I could assign the date of this 
conversation, it would throw some light on what might be then pass- 
ing in his own mind. 



2G0 LITERARY CHARACTER, 

but its annihilation. TTi.s friends Hume and Robertson 
must have turned from this page humiliated and indig- 
nant. They could have supplied Adam Smith with a 
truer conception of the literary character, of its inde- 
pendence, its influence, and its glory. 

I have projected a plan for the alleviation of the state 
of these authors who are not blessed with a patrimony. 
The trade connected with literature is carried on by men 
who are usually not literate, and the generality of the 
publishers of books, unlike all other tradesmen, are often 
the worst judges of their own wares. Were it practica- 
ble, as I believe it to be, that authors and men of letters 
could themselves be booksellers, the public would derive 
this immediate benefit from the scheme; a deluge of 
worthless or indifferent books would be turned away, 
and the name of the literary publisher would be a pledge 
for the value of every new book. Every literary man 
would choose his own favourite department, and we 
should learn from him as well as from his books. 

Against this project it may be urged, that literary men 
are ill adapted to attend to the regular details of trade, 
and that the great capitalists in the book business have 
not been men of literature. But this plan is not sug- 
gested for accumulating a great fortune, or for the pur- 
pose of raising up a new class of tradesmen. It is not 
designed to make authors wealthy, for that would inev- 
itably extinguish great literary exertion, but only to 
make them independent, as the best means to preserve 
exertion. The details of trade are not even to reach 
him. The poet Gesner, a bookseller, left his librairie to 
the care of his admirable wife. His own works, the ele- 
gant editions which issued from his press, and the value 
of manuscripts, were the objects of his attention. 

On the Continent many of the dealers in books have 
been literary men. At the memorable expulsion of the 
French Protestants on the edict of Xante s, their expatria- 



LITERARY BOOKSELLERS. 261 

ted literary men flew to the shores of England, and the 
free provinces of Holland ; and it was in Holland that 
this colony of litterateurs established magnificent printing- 
houses, and furnished Europe with editions of the native 
writers of France, often preferable to the originals, and 
even wrote the best works of that time. At that memo- 
rable period in our own history, when two thousand non- 
conformists were ejected on St. Bartholomew's day from 
the national establishment, the greater part were men of 
learning, who, deprived of their livings, were destitute 
of any means of existence. These scholars were com- 
pelled to look to some profitable occupation, and for the 
greater part they fixed on trades connected with litera- 
ture; some became eminent booksellers, and continued 
to be voluminous writers, without finding their studies 
interrupted by their commercial arrangements. The de- 
tails of trade must be left to others ; the hand of a child 
can turn a vast machine, and the object here proposed 
would be lost, if authors sought to become merely book- 
sellers. 

Whenever the public of Europe shall witness such a 
new order of men among their booksellers, they will 
have less to read, but more to remember. Their opin- 
ions will be less fluctuating, and their knowledge will 
come to them with more maturity. Men of letters will 
fly to the house of the bookseller who in that class of 
literature in which he deals, will himself be not the least 
eminent member. 



262 LITERARY CHARACTER. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

The matrimonial stato of literature. — Matrimony said not to be well 
suited to the domestic life of genius. — Celibacy a concealed cause of 
tho early querulousness of men of genius. — Of unhappy unions. — 
Not absolutely necessary that the wife should bo a literary woman. — 
Of tho docility and susceptibility of tho higher female character. — 
A picture of a literary wife. 

MATRIMONY has often been considered .'is a condi- 
tion not well suited to the domestic life of genius, 
accompanied as it must be by many embarrassment* for 

the head and the heart. It was an axiom with Fm-ssli, 
the Swiss artist, that the marriage state is incompatible 
with a high cultivation of the fine arts; and such appears 
to have been the feeling of most artists. When Michael 
Angelo was asked why lie did not marry, he replied, " I 
have espoused my art; and it occasions me sufficient 
domestic cares, for my works shall be my children, 
What would Bartholomeo Ghiberti have been, had he 
not made the gates of St. John? His children consumed 
his fortune, but his gates, worthy to be the gates of Para- 
dise, remain." The three Caraccis refused the conjugal 
bond on the same principle, dreading the interruptions 
of domestic life. Their crayons and paper were always 
on their dining-table. Careless of fortune, they deter- 
mined never to hurry over their works in order that 
they might supply the ceaseless demands of a family. 
We discover the same principle operating in our own 
times. When a young painter, who had just married, 
told Sir Joshua that*he was preparing to pursue his 
studies in Italy, that great painter exclaimed, " Married ! 
then you are ruined as an artist !" 

The same principle has influenced literary men. Sir 
Thomas Bodley had a smart altercation with his first 
librarian, insisting that he should not marry, maintaining 



CELIBACY. 263 

its absurdity in the man who had the perpetual care of a 
public library ; and Woodward left as one of the express 
conditions of his lecturer, that he was not to be a mar- 
ried man. They imagined that their private affairs would 
interfere with their public duties. Peiresc, the great 
French collector, refused marriage, convinced that the 
cares of a family were too absorbing for the freedom 
necessary to literary pursuits, and claimed likewise a 
sacrifice of fortune incompatible with his great designs. 
Boyle, who would not suffer his studies to be interrupted 
by " household affairs," lived as a boarder with his sister, 
Lady Ranelagh. Newton, Locke, Leibnitz, Bayle, and 
Hobbes, and Hume, and Gibbon, and Adam Smith, 
decided for celibacy. These great authors placed their 
happiness in their celebrity. 

This debate, for the present topic has sometimes 
warmed into one, is in truth ill adapted for controversy. 
The heart is more concerned in its issue than any es- 
poused doctrine terminating in partial views. Look into 
the domestic annals of genius — observe the variety of 
positions into which the literary character is thrown in the 
nuptial state. Cynicism will not always obtain a sullen 
triumph, nor prudence always be allowed to calculate 
away some of the richer feelings of our nature. It is not 
an axiom that literary characters must necessarily institute 
a new order of celibacy. The sentence of the apostle 
pronounces that "the forbidding . to marry is a doctrine 
of devils." Wesley, who published, "Thoughts on a 
Single Life," advised some "to remain single for the 
kingdom of heaven's sake ; but the precept," he adds, " is 
not for the many." So indecisive have been the opinions 
of the most curious inquirers concerning the matrimonial 
state, whenever a great destination has engaged their 
consideration. 

One position we may assume, that the studies, and 
even the happiness of the pursuits of men of genius, are 



264 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

powerfully influenced by the domestic associate of their 
lives. 

They rarely pass through the age of love without its 
passion. Even their Delias and their Amandas are often 
the shadows of some real object; for as Shakspeare'fl ex- 
perience told him, 

Never durst poet touch a pen to write, 
Until his ink were temper'd with love's sighs. 

Their imagination is perpetually colouring those pictures 
of domestic happiness on which they delight to dwell 
He who is no husband sighs for that tenderness which is 
at once bestowed and received; and tears will si ait in the 
eyes of him who, in becoming a child among children, yet 
feels that he is no father! These deprivations have usu- 
ally been the concealed cause of the querulous melancholy 
of the literary character. 

Such was the real occasion of Shenstone's unhappiness. 
In early life he had been captivated by a young lady 
adapted to be both the muse and the wife of the poet, 
and their mutual sensibility lasted for some years. It 
lasted until she died. It was in parting from her that he 
first sketched his " Pastoral Ballad." Shenstone had the 
fortitude to refuse marriage. His spirit could not endure 
that she should participate in that life of self-privations 
to which he was doomed ; but his heart was not locked 
up in the ice of celibacy, and his plaintive love songs, 
and elegies flowed from no fictitious source. " It is long 
since," said he, "I have considered myself as undone. 
The world will not perhaps consider me in that light en- 
tirely till I have married my maid."* 

Thomson met a reciprocal passion in his Amanda, while 
the full tenderness of his heart was ever wasting itself 
like waters in a desert. As we have been made little ac- 

* The melancholy tale of Shenstone's life is narrated in the third 
volume of "Curiosities of Literature." — Ed. 



CELIBACY. 265 

quainted with this part of the history of the poet of the 
" Seasons," I shall give his own description of those deep 
feelings from a manuscript letter written to Mallet. " To 
turn my eyes a softer way, to you know who — absence 
sighs it to me. "What is my heart made of ? a soft sys- 
tem of low nerves, too sensible for my quiet — capable of 
being very happy or very unhappy, I am afraid the last 
will prevail. Lay your hand upon a kindred heart, and 
despise me not. I know not what it is, but she dwells 
upon my thought in a mingled sentiment, which is the 
sweetest, the most intimately pleasing the soul can re- 
ceive, and which I would wish never to want towards 
some dear object or another. To have always some se- 
cret darling idea to which one can still have recourse 
amidst the noise and nonsense of the world, and which 
never fails to touch us in the most exquisite manner, is 
an art of happiness that fortune cannot deprive us of. 
This may be called romantic ; but whatever the cause is, 
the effect is really felt. Pray, wheri you write, tell me 
when you saw her, and with the pure eye of a friend, 
when you see her again, whisper that I am her most 
humble servant." 

Even Pope was enamoured of a " scornful lady ;" and, 
as Johnson observed, " polluted his will with female resent- 
ment." Johnson himself, we are told by one who knew 
him, " had always a metaphysical passion for one princess 
or other, — the rustic Lucy Porter, or the haughty Molly 
Aston, or the sublimated methodistic Hill Boothby ; and, 
lastly, the more charming Mrs. Thrale." Even in his 
advanced age, at the height of his celebrity, we hear his 
cries of lonely wretchedness. " I want every comfort ; 
my life is very solitary and very cheerless. Let me 
know that I have yet a friend — let us be kind to one 
another." But the " kindness " of distant friends is like 
the polar sun — too far removed to warm us. Those who 
have eluded the individual tenderness of the female, are 



266 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

tortured by an aohing void in their feelings. The stoic 
Akenside, in his "Odes," lias preserved the history <»i" a 
life of genius in a series of his own feelings. One entitled, 
"At Study," closes with these memorable lines: — 

Mo though no peculiar fair 
Touches with a lover's care ; 

Igh tin* pride of my desire 
Ada immortal friendship's name, 

Asks the palm of honest fame 

And the old heroic lyre ; 
Though the daj have smoothly gone, 
Or to lctter'd leisure known, 

Or in social duty spent ; 
Yet at the eve my lonely breast 
Seeks in vaimfnr 

Languishes for true c>> 

If ever a man of letters lived in a state of energy and 
excitement which might raise him above the atmosphere 
of social love, it was assuredly the enthusiast, Thomas 
Hollis, who, solely devoted to literature and to republi- 
canism, was occupied in furnishing Europe and America 
with editions of his favourite authors. He would not 
marry, lest marriage should interrupt the labours of his 
platonic politics. But his extraordinary memoirs, while 
they show an intrepid mind in a robust frame, bear wit- 
ness to the self-tormentor who had trodden down the 
natural bonds of domestic life. Hence the deep " dejec- 
tion of his spirits ;" those incessant cries, that he has " no 
one to advise, assist, or cherish those magnanimous pur- 
suits in him." At length he retreated into the country, 
in utter hopelessness. "I go not into the country for 
attentions to agriculture as such, nor attentions of inter- 
est of any kind, which I have ever despised as such ; but 
as a used man, to pass the remainder of a life in tolerable 
sanity and quiet, after having given up the flower of it, 
voluntarily, day, week, month, year after year, successive 
to each other, to public service, and being no longer able 



UNHAPPY UNIONS. 267 

to sustain, in body or mind, the labours that I have 
chosen to go through without falling speedily into the 
greatest disorders, and it might be imbecility itself. This 
is not colouring, but the exact plain truth." 

Poor moralist, and what art thou? 
A solitary fly ! 

Thy joys no glittering female meets, 
'No hive hast thou of hoarded sweets. 

Assuredly it would not have been a question whether 
these literary characters should have married, had not 
Montaigne, when a widower, declared that "he would 
not marry a second time, though it were Wisdom itself;" 
but the airy Gascon has not disclosed how far Madame 
was concerned in this anathema. 

If the literary man unite himself to a woman whose 
taste and whose temper are adverse to his pursuits, he 
must courageously prepare for a martyrdom. Should a 
female mathematician be united to a poet, it is probable 
that she would be left amidst her abstractions, to demon- 
strate to herself how many a specious diagram fails when 
brought into its mechanical operation ; or discovering 
the infinite varieties of a curve, she might take occasion 
to deduce her husband's versatility. If she become as 
jealous of his books as other wives might be of his mis- 
tresses, she may act the virago even over his innocent pa- 
pers. The wife of Bishop Cooper, while her husband was 
employed on his Lexicon, one day consigned the volume 
of many years to the flames, and obliged that scholar to 
begin a second siege of Troy in a second Lexicon. The 
wife of Whitelocke often destroyed his MSS., and the 
marks of her nails have come down to posterity in the 
numerous lacerations still gaping in his "Memorials." 
The learned Sir Henry Saville, who devoted more than 
half his life and nearly ten thousand pounds to his mag- 
nificent edition of St. Chrysostom, led a very uneasy life 



208 LITERARY CITARACTER. 

between the 6aint and her ladyship. What with her 
tenderness for him, and her own want of amusement, 
St. Clirysostora, it appears, incurred more than 
danger. 

Genius has not preserved itself from the errors and 
infirmities of matrimonial connexions. The energetic 
character of Dante eonld neither soften nor control the 
asperity of his lady ; and when that great poet lived in 
exile, -lie never eared to see him more, though he was the 
father of her six children. The internal state of the house 
of Domenichino afflicted that great artist with many sor- 
rows. He had married a beauty of high birth and 
treme haughtiness, and of the most avaricious disposition. 
When at Naples he himself dreaded lest the avaricious 
passion of his wife should not be able to resist the offers 
she received to poison him, and he was compelled to pro- 
vide and dress his own food. It is believed that he died 
of poison. What a picture has Passeri left of the domes- 
tic interior of this great artist ! Coslfra mille crepacuo- 
ri mori uno de> piii eccellenti artefici del mundo ; che oltre 
al suo valore pittorico avrebbe piii cPogni altri maritato 
di viver sempre per Vonestd personale. " So perished, 
amidst a thousand heart-breakings, the most excellent of 
artists; who besides his worth as a painter, deserved 
as much as any one to have lived for his excellence as a 
man." 

Milton carried nothing of the greatness of his mind in 
the choice of his wives. His first wife was the object of 
sudden fancy. He left the metropolis and unexpectedly 
returned a married man, and united to a woman of such 
uncongenial dispositions, that the romp was frightened 
at the literary habits of the great poet, found his 
house solitary, beat his nephews, and ran away after a 
single month's residence ! To this circumstance we owe 
his famous treatise on Divorce; and a party (by no 
means extinct), who having made as ill choices in their 



UNHAPPY UNIONS. 269 

wives, were for divorcing as fast as they had been for 
marrying, calling themselves Miltonists. 

When we find that Moliere, so skilful in human life, 
married a girl from his own troop, who made him ex- 
perience all those bitter disgusts and ridiculous embar- 
rassments which he himself played off at the theatre ; 
that Addison's fine taste in morals and in life could suffer 
the ambition of a courtier to prevail with himself to seek 
a countess, whom he describes under the stormy charac- 
ter of Oceana, and who drove him contemptuously into 
solitude, and shortened his days ; and that Steele, warm 
and thoughtless, was united to a cold precise "Miss 
Prue," as he himself calls her, and from whom he never 
parted without bickerings ; in all these cases we censure 
the great men, not their wives.* Rousseau has honestly 
confessed his error. He had united himself to a low, 
illiterate woman; and when he retreated into solitude, 
he felt the weight which he carried with him. He 
laments that he had not educated his wife : " In a docile 
age, I could have adorned her mind with talents and 
knowledge, which would have more closely united us in 
retirement. We should not then have felt the intolerable 
tedium of a tete-a-tete; it is in solitude one feels the 
advantage of living with another who can think." Thus 
Rousseau confesses the fatal error, and indicates the 
right principle. 

Yet it seems not absolutely necessary for the domestic 
happiness of the literary character, that his wife should 
be a literary woman. Tycho Brahe, noble by birth as 
well as genius, married the daughter of a peasant. By 
which means that great man obtained two points essential 
for his abstract pursuits; he acquired an obedient wife, 
and freed himself of his noble relatives, who would no 
longer hold an intercourse with the man who was spread- 
ing their family honours into more ages than perhaps 

* See " Curiosities of Literature," for anecdotes of "Literary Wives." 



LITERARY CHARACTER. 

they could have traced them backwards. The lady of 
Wieland waa a pleasing domestic person, who, without 
reading her husband's works, knew he was a L r iv :l t poet. 
A\ [eland was apt to exercise bis imagination in declam- 
atory invectives and bitter amplifications; ami the 
writer of this account, in perfect German taste, assures 
as, "that many of his felicities of diction were thus 
struck out at a heat.* 1 During this frequent operation 
of his genius, the placable temper of Mrs. Wieland over- 
came tin- orgasm of the German bard merely by persist- 
ing in her admiration and her patience. When the burst 
was over, Wieland himself was so charmed by her docil- 
ity, that he usually closed with giving up all his 
opinions. 

There is another sort of homely happiness, aptly 
described in the plain words of Bishop Newton. He 
found " the study of sacred and classic authors ill agreed 
with butchers'' and bakers 1 bills;'' and when the pros- 
pect of a bishopric opened on him, "more servants, more 
entertainments, a better table," &c, it became neces- 
sary to look out for " some clever, sensible woman to be 
his wife, who would lay out his money to the best advan- 
tage, and be careful and tender of his health ; a friend 
and companion at all hours, and who would be happier 
in staying at home than be perpetually gadding abroad." 
Such are the wives not adapted to be the votaries, but 
who may be the faithful companions through life, even 
of a man of genius. 

But in the character of the higher female we may dis- 
cover a constitutional faculty of docility and enthusiasm 
which has varied with the genius of different ages. It is 
the opinion of an elegant metaphysician, that the mind of 
the female adopts and familiarises itself with ideas more 
easily than that of man, and hence the facility with which 
the sex contract or lose habits, and accommodate their 
minds to new situations. Politics, w r ar, and learning, are 



UNHAPPY UNIONS. 271 

equally objects of attainment to their delightful suscepti- 
bility.. Love has the fancied transparency of the came- 
leon. When the art of government directed the feel- 
ings of a woman, we behold Aspasia, eloquent with the 
genius of Pericles, instructing the Archons ; Portia, the 
wife of the republican Brutus, devouring burning coals ; 
and the wife of Lucan, transcribing and correcting the 
Pharsalia, before the bust of the poet, which she had 
placed on her bed, that his very figure might never be 
absent. When the universities were opened to the sex, 
they acquired academic glory. The wives of military 
men have shared in the perils of the field ; or like Anna 
Comnena and our Mrs. Hutchinson, have become even 
their historians. In the age of love and sympathy, the 
female often receives an indelible pliancy from her liter- 
ary associate. His pursuits become the objects of her 
thoughts, and he observes his own taste reflected in his 
family; much less through his own influence, for his 
solitary labours often preclude him from forming them, 
than by that image of his own genius — the mother of his 
children ! The subjects, the very books which enter into 
his literary occupation, are cherished by her imagina- 
tion ; a feeling finely opened by the lady of the author 
of " Sandford and Merton :" " My ideas of my husband," 
she said, " are so much associated with his books, that to 
part with them would be as it were breaking some of the 
last ties which still connect me with so beloved an 
object. The being in the midst of books he has been 
accustomed to read, and which contain his marks and 
notes, will still give him a sort of existence with me. 
Unintelligible as such fond chimeras may appear to 
many people, I am persuaded they are not so to you." 

With what simplicity Meta Mollers, the wife of Klop- 
stock, in her German-English, describes to Richardson, 
the novelist, the manner in which she passes hei* day 
with her poet ! she tells him that " she is always present 



272 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

at the birth of the young verses, which begin by frag- 
ments, here and there, of a rabjecl with which his boo] is 
just then filled. Persona who live as we <l<> have qo 
need of two chambers; we are always in the same: I 
with my little work, still! still! only regarding some- 
times my husband's fare, which is so venerable at that 
time with tears of devotion, and all the sublimity of the 
Bubjecl — my husband reading me his younj . and 

Buffering my criticisms." 

The picture of a literary wife of antiquity has de- 
scended to us, touched by tin- domestic pencil of genius, 
in the Busceptible Calphurnia, the lady of the youi 
Pliny. u Her affection for me," lie say-, "has given her 
a turn to books: her passion will increase with our "lays, 
for it is not my youth or my person, which time grad- 
ually impairs, but my reputation and my glory, of which 
she is enamoured." 

I have been told that Buffon, notwithstanding his 
favourite seclusion of his old tower in his garden, ac- 
knowledged to a friend that his lady had a considerable 
influence over his compositions : " Often," said he, " when 
I cannot please myself, and am impatient at the dis- 
appointment, Madame de Buffon reanimates my exertion, 
or withdraws me to repose for a short interval ; I return 
to my pen refreshed, and aided by her advice." 

Gesner declared that whatever were his talents, the 
person who had most contributed to develope them was 
his wife. She is unknown to the public ; but the history 
of the mind of such a woman is discovered in the 
"Letters of Gesner and his Family." While Gesner 
gave himself up entirely to his favourite arts, drawing, 
painting, etching, and poetry, his wife would often reani- 
mate a genius that was apt to despond in its attempts, 
and often exciting him to new productions, her sure and 
delicate taste was attentively consulted by the poet- 
painter — but she combined the most practical good sense 



GESNER'S WIFE. 273 

with the most feeling imagination. This forms the rare- 
ness of the character ; for this same woman, who united 
with her husband in the education of their children, to 
relieve him from the interruptions of common business, 



Her correspondence with her son, a young artist travel- 
ling for his studies, opens what an old poet compre- 
hensively terms " a gathered mind." Imagine a woman 
attending to the domestic economy, and to the commercial 
details, yet withdrawing out of this business of life into 
the more elevated pursuits of her husband, and at the 
same time combining with all this the cares and counsels 
which she bestowed on her son to form the artist and 
the man. 

To know this incomparable woman we must hear her. 
" Consider your father's precepts as oracles of wisdom ; 
they are the result of the experience he has collected, 
not only of life, but of that art which he has acquired 
simply by his own industry." She would not have her 
son suffer his strong affection to herself to absorb all 
other sentiments. "Had you remained at home, and 
been habituated under your mother's auspices to employ- 
ments merely domestic, what advantage would you have 
acquired ? I own we should have passed some delightful 
winter evenings together; but your love for the arts, 
and my ambition to see my sons as much distinguished 
for their talents as their virtues, would have been a con- 
stant source of regret at your passing your time in a 
manner so little worthy of you." 

How profound is her observation on the strong but 
confined attachments of a youth of genius! "I have 

* Gesner's father was a bookseller of Zurich ; descended from a family 
of men learned in the exact sciences, he was apprenticed to a book- 
seller at Berlin, and afterwards entered into his father's business. The 
best edition of his "Idylls " is that published by himself, in two vol- 
umes, 4to, illustrated by his own engravings. — Ed. 
18 



27:1: LITERARY CHARACTER 

frequently remarked, with Borne regret, the 
taohmenl you indulge towardi those who Bee and feel as 
you do yourself, and the total neglect with which yon 
seem to treat every one else. I should reproach a man 
with Buch a fault who was destined to pass his lift in a 
small and unvarying circle; but in an artist, who has a 
great object in view, and whose country is the whole 
world, this disposition Beems to be likely to produce a 
great number of inconveniences. Alas! my son, the life 
yon have hitherto Led in your father's house has been in 
fact a pastoral life* and not soch a one as was necessary 
for the education of a man whose destiny Bummons him 
to the world.* 1 

Ami when her son, after meditating on some of the 
most glorious productions of art, felt himself, as he says, 
u disheartened and cast down at the unattainable superi- 
ority of the artist, and that it was only by reflecting on 
the immense labour and continued efforts which such 
masterpieces must have required, that I regained my 
courage and my ardour," she observes, "This passage, 
my dear son, is to me as precious as gold, and I send it 
to you again, because I wish you to impress it strongly 
on your mind. The remembrance of this may also be a 
useful preservative from too great confidence in your 
abilities, to which a warm imagination may sometimes be 
liable, or from the despondence you might oecasionally 
feel from the contemplation of grand originals. Continue, 
therefore, my dear son, to form a sound judgment and a 
pure taste from your own observations ; your mind, 
while yet young and flexible, may receive whatever im- 
pressions you wish. Be careful that your abilities do 
not inspire in you too much confidence, lest it should 
happen to you as it has to many others, that they have 
never possessed any greater merit than that of having 
good abilities." 

One more extract, to preserve an incident which may, 



GEStfER'S WIFE. 275 

touch the heart of genius, This extraordinary woman, 
whose characteristic is that of strong sense combined 
with delicacy of feeling, would check her German sen- 
timentality at the moment she was betraying those emo- 
tions in which the imagination is so powerfully mixed 
up with the associated feelings. Arriving at their cot- 
tage at Sihlwald, she proceeds — " On entering the par- 
lour three small pictures, painted by you, met my eyes. 
I passed some time in contemplating them. It is now a 
year, I thought, since I saw him trace these pleasing 
forms ; he whistled and sang, and I saw them grow under 
his pencil ; now he is far, far from us. In short, I had 
the weakness to press my lips on one of these pictures. 
You well know, my dear son, that I am not much ad- 
dicted to scenes of a sentimental turn ; but to-day, while 
I considered your works, I could not restrain this little 
impulse of maternal feelings. Do not, however, be ap- 
prehensive that the tender affection of a mother will ever 
lead me too far, or that I shall suffer my mind to be too 
powerfully impressed with the painful sensations to 
which your absence gives birth. My reason convinces 
me that it is for your welfare that you are now in a place 
where your abilities will have opportunities of unfolding, 
and where you can become great in your art." 

Such was the incomparable wife and mother of the 
Gesners ! Will it now be a question whether matrimony 
be incompatible with the cultivation of the arts? A 
wife who reanimates the drooping genius of her husband, 
and a mother who is inspired by the ambition of behold- 
ing her sons eminent, is she not the real being which the 
ancients personified in their Muse ? 



276 LITERARY CHARACTER. 



CHAPTER XIX 

tn;i! 

Literary friendships. — In early life. — Different from those of men' 
world. — They suffer an unrestrained communication of their iV ls 
and bear reprimands and exhortations. — Unity of feelings. — A 
pathy not of manners but of feelings. — Admit of dissimilar cha\ 
lera. — Their peculiar glory. — Their sorrow. 

AMOXG the virtues which literature inspires, is oftc' 
that of the most romantic friendship. The deliriui 
of love, and even its lighter caprices, are incompatible 
with the pursuits of the student; but to feel friendship 
like a passion is necessary to the mind of genius alter- 
nately elated and depressed, ever prodigal of feeling and 
excursive in knowledge. 

The qualities which constitute literary friendship, com- 
pared with those of men of the world, must render it a 
sentiment as rare as love itself, which it resembles in 
that intellectual tenderness in which both so deeply 
participate. 

Born " in the dews of their youth," this friendship will 
not expire on their tomb. In the school or the college 
this immortality begins ; and, engaged in similar studies, 
should even one excel the other, he will find in him the 
protector of his fame ; as Addison did in Steele, West in 
Gray, and Gray in Mason. Thus Petrarch was the guide 
of Boccaccio, thus Boccaccio became the defender of his 
master's genius. Perhaps friendship is never more in- 
tense than in an intercourse of minds of ready counsels 
and inspiring ardours. United in the same pursuits, but 
directed by an unequal experience, the imperceptible 
superiority interests, without mortifying. It is a coun- 
sel, it is an aid; in whatever form it shows itself, it has 
nothing of the malice of rivalry. 

A beautiful picture of such a friendship among men of 



LITERARY FRIENDSHIPS. 277 

genius offers itself in the history of Mignard, the great 
French painter, and Du Fresnoy, the great critic of the 
art itself. Du Fresnoy, abandoned in utter scorn by his- 
stern father, an apothecary, for his entire devotion to his 
seductive art, lived at Rome in voluntary poverty, till 
Mignard, his old fellow-student, arrived, when they be- 
came known by the name of " the inseparables." The 
talents of the friends were different, but their studies 
were the same. Their days melted away together in 
drawing from the ancient statues and the basso-relievos, 
in studying in the galleries of paintings, or among the 
villas which embellish the environs of Rome. One roof 
sheltered them, and one table supplied their sober meal. 
Light were the slumbers which closed each day, each the 
pleasing image of the former. But this remarkable friend- 
ship was not a simple sentiment which limited the views 
of " the Inseparables," for with them it was a perpetual 
source of mutual usefulness. They gave accounts to each 
other of whatever they observed, and carefully noted 
their own defects. Du Fresnoy, so critical in the theory 
of the art, was unsuccessful in the practical parts. His 
delight in poetical composition had retarded the progress 
• of his pictorial powers. Not having been taught the 
handling of his pencil, he worked with difficulty; but 
Mignard succeeded in giving him a freer command and 
a more skilful touch ; while Du Fresnoy, who was the 
more literary man, enriched the invention of Mignard by 
reading to him an Ode of Anacreon or Horace, a passage 
from the Iliad or Odyssey, or the iEneid, or the Jeru- 
salem Delivered, which offered subjects for the artist's 
invention, who would throw out five or six different 
sketches on the same subject ; a habit which so highly 
improved the inventive powers of Mignard, that he could 
compose a fine picture with playful facility. Thus they 
lived together, mutually enlightening each other. Mig- 
nard supplied Du Fresnoy with all that fortune had 



273 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

refused him; and when lie was no more, perpetuated his 
feme, which he felt was a portion of his own celebrity, 
by publishing his posthumous poem, A Artt Graphic 
a poem, which Mason has made readable by his versifica- 
tion, and Reynolds eren interesting by his invaluable 
commentary. 

In the poem Cowley composed, on the death of Ins 

friend Harvey, ilii- stanza opens a pleasing scene of two 
young literary friends engaged in their midnight studies : 

Fay, for you paw us, ye immortal lights! 
How oft unwfarii.nl have we spent the nights, 
Till the Leda an stars, so famed for love, 
Wonder'd at us from above. 
"Wo spent them not in toys, in lust, or wine ; 

But search of deep philosophy, 

"Wit, eloquence, and poetry ; 
Arts which I loved, for they, my friend, were thine. 

Touched by a personal knowledge of this union of 
genius and affection, even Malone commemorates, with 
unusual warmth, the literary friendships of Sir Joshua 
Reynolds; and with a felicity of fancy, not often in- 
dulged, has raised an unforced parallel between the 
bland wisdom of Sir Joshua and the "mitis sapientia 
Ladi." " What the illustrious Scipio was to Ladius was 
the all-knowing and all-accomplished Burke to Rey- 
nolds ;" and what the elegant Laelius was to his master 
PanaBtius, whom he gratefully protected, and to his com- 
panion the poet Lucilius, whom he patronised, was Rey- 
nolds to Johnson, of whom he was the scholar and friend, 
and to Goldsmith, whom he loved and aided. f 

* La Yie de Pierre Mignard, par L'Abbe de Monville, the work of 
an amateur. 

f Reynolds's hospitality was unbounded to all literary men, and his 
evenings were devoted to their society. It was at his house they com- 
pared notes ; and the President of the Royal Academy obtained that 
information which gave him a full knowledge of the outward world, 
which his ceaseless occupation could not else have allowed. — Ed. 



LITERARY FRIENDSHIPS. 279 

Count Azara mourns with equal tenderness and force 
over the memory of the artist and the writer Mengs. 
"The most tender friendship would call forth tears in 
this sad duty of scattering flowers on his tomb ; but the 
shade of my extinct friend warns me not to be satisfied 
with dropping flowers and tears — they are useless ; and 
I would rather accomplish his wishes, in making known 
the author and his works." 

I am infinitely delighted by a circumstance communi- 
cated to me by one who had visited Gleim, the German 
poet, who seems to have been a creature made up alto- 
gether of sensibility. His many and illustrious friends 
he had never forgotten, and to the last hour of a life, 
prolonged beyond his eightieth year, he possessed those 
interior feelings which can make even an old man an 
enthusiast. There seemed for Gleim to be no extinction 
in friendship when the friend was no more ; and he had 
invented a singular mode of gratifying his feelings of lit- 
erary friendships. The visitor found the old man in a 
room of which the wainscot was panelled, as we still see 
among us in ancient houses. In every panel Gleim had 
inserted the portrait of a friend, and the apartment was 
crowded. " You see," said the grey-haired poet, " that 
I never have lost a friend, and am sitting always among 
them." 

Such friendship can never be the lot of men of the 
world ; for the source of these lies in the interior affec- 
tions and the intellectual feelings. Fontenelle describes 
with characteristic delicacy the conversations of such lit- 
erary friends : " Our days passed like moments ; thanks 
to those pleasures, which, however, are not included in 
those which are commonly called pleasures." The friend- 
ships of the men of society move on the principle of per- 
sonal interest, but interest can easily separate the inter- 
ested ; or they are cherished to relieve themselves from 
the listlessness of existence ; but, as weariness is conta- 



280 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

gious, the contact of the propagator is watched. M< -u of 
the world may look on each other with the same counte- 
nances, but not with the same hearts. In the common 
mart of life intimacies may be found which terminate in 
complaint and contempt ; the more they know one an- 
other, the less is their mutual esteem: the feeble mind 
quarrels with one still more imbecile than itself; the dis- 
solute riot with the dissolute, and they despise their 
companions, -while they too have themselves become des- 
picable. 

Literary friendships are marked by another peculiarit y ; 
the true philosophical spirit has learned to bear that 
shock of contrary opinions which minds less meditative 
are iinequal to encounter. Men of genius live in the 
unrestrained communication of their ideas, and confide 
even their caprices with a freedom which sometimes star- 
tles ordinary observers. We see literary men, the most 
opposite in dispositions and opinions, deriving from each 
other that fulness of knowledge which unfolds the cer- 
tain, the probable, the doubtful. Topics which break the 
world into factions and sects, and truths which ordinary 
men are doomed only to hear from a malignant adver- 
sary, they gather from a friend ! If neither yields up his 
opinions to the other, they are at least certain of silenco 
and a. hearing ; but usually • 

Tt:e wise new wisdom from the wise acquire. 

TmV generous freedom, which spares neither repn 
niands nor o-xhortation, has often occurred in the in 
tercourse of literary men. Hume and Robertson were 
engaged in the same studies, but with very opposite 
principles ; yet Kobertson declined writing the English 
history, which he aspired to do, lest it should injure the 
plans of Hume ; a noble sacrifice ! 

Politics once divided Boccaccio and Petrarch. The 
poet of Valchiusa had never forgiven ihe Florer tines for 



PETRARCH AND BOCCACCIO 281 

their persecution of his father. By the mediation of Boc- 
caccio they now offered to reinstate Petrarch in his patri- 
mony and his honours. Won over by the tender solici- 
tude of his friend, Petrarch had consented to return to 
his country; but with his usual inconstancy of temper, 
he had again excused himself to the senate of Florence, 
and again retreated to his solitude. Nor was this all ; 
for the Yisconti of Milan had by their flattery and prom- 
ises seduced Petrarch to their court ; a court, the avowed 
enemy of Florence. Boccaccio, for the honour of litera- 
ture, of his friend, of his country, indignantly heard of 
Petrarch's fatal decision, and addressed him by a letter — 
the most interesting perhaps which ever passed between 
two literary friends, who were torn asunder by the mo- 
mentary passions of the vulgar, but who were still united 
by that immortal friendship which literature inspires, and 
by a reverence for that posterity which they knew would 
concern itself with their affairs. 

It was on a journey to Ravenna that Boccaccio first 
heard the news of Petrarch's abandonment of his coun- 
try, when he thus vehemently addressed his brother- 
genius : — 

" I would be silent, but I cannot : my reverence com- 
mands silence, but my indignation speaks. How has it 
happened that Silvanus (under this name he conceals Pe- 
trarch) has forgotten his dignity, the many conversations 
we had together on the state of Italy, his hatred of the 
archbishop (Visconti), his love of solitude and freedom, 
so necessary for study, and has resolved to imprison the 
Muses at that court ? Whom may we trust again, if Sil- 
vanus, who once branded II Visconti as the Cruel, a 
Polyphemus, a Cyclop, has avowed himself his friend, 
and placed his neck under the yoke of him whose audaci- 
ty, and pride, and tyranny, he so deeply abhorred ? How 
has Visconti obtained that which King Robert, which 
the pontiff, the emperor, the King of France, could not ? 



282 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

Am I to conclude that you accepted this favour from a 
disdain of your fellow-citizens, who once indeed scorned 
you, but who have reinstated you in the paternal patri- 
mony of which you have been deprived? I do not dis- 
approve of a just indignation; but I take Heaven to wit- 
ness that I believe that no man, whoever he may be, rightly 
and honestly can labour against his country, whatever be 
the injury lie lias received. You will gain nothing by 
opposing me in this opinion; for if stirred up by the 
most just indignation you become the friend of the enemy 
of your country, unquestionably you will not spur him on 
to war, nor assist him by your arm, nor by your counsel ; 
yet how can you avoid rejoicing with him, when you 
hear of the ruins, the conflagrations, the imprison- 
ments, death, and rapine, which he shall spread among 
us?" 

Such was the bold appeal to elevated feelings, and such 
the keen reproach inspired by that confidential freedom 
which can only exist in the intercourse of great minds. 
The literary friendship, or rather adoration of Boccaccio 
for Petrarch, was not bartered at the cost of his patriot- 
ism : and it is worthy of our notice that Petrarch, whose 
personal injuries from an ungenerous republic were rank- 
ling in his mind, and whom even the eloquence of Boc- 
caccio could not disunite from his protector Visconti, yet 
received the ardent reproaches of his friend without an- 
ger, though not without maintaining the freedom of his 
own opinions. Petrarch replied, that the anxiety of Boc- 
caccio for the liberty of his friend was a thought most 
grateful to him ; but he assured Boccaccio that he preserv- 
ed his freedom, even although it appeared that he bowled 
under a hard yoke. He hoped that he had not to learn 
to serve in his old age, he who had hitherto studied to 
preserve his independence ; but, in respect to servitude, 
he did not know whom it was most displeasing to serve, 



LITERARY FRIENDSHIPS. 283 

a tyrant like Visconti, or with Boccaccio, a people of 
tyrants.* 

The unity of feeling is displayed in such memorable 
associates as Beaumont and Fletcher ; whose labours are 
so combined, that no critic can detect the mingled pro- 
duction of either ; and whose lives are so closely united, 
that no biographer can compose the memoirs of the one 
without running into the history of the other. Their 
days were interwoven as their verses. Montaigne and 
Charron, in the eyes of posterity, are rivals ; but such lit- 
erary friendship knows no rivalry. Such was Montaigne's 
affection for Charron, that he requested him by his 
will to bear the arms of the Montaignes ; and Charron 
evinced his gratitude to the manes of his departed friend, 
by leaving his fortune to the sister of Montaigne. 

How pathetically Erasmus mourns over the death of 
his beloved Sir Thomas More ! — " In Moro mihi videor 
extinctus" — " I seem to see myself extinct in More." It 
was a melancholy presage of his own death, which shortly 
after followed. The Doric sweetness and simplicity of 
old Isaac Walton, the angler, were reflected in a mind as 
clear and generous, when Charles Cotton continued the 
feelings, rather than the little work of Walton. Metas- 
tasio and Farinelli called each other il Gemetto, the Twin : 
and both delighted to trace the resemblance of their 
lives and fates, and the perpetual alliance of the verse 
and the voice. The famous John Baptista Porta had a 
love of the mysterious parts of sciences, such as physiog- 
nomy, natural magic, the cryptical arts of writing, and 
projected many curious inventions which astonished his 
age, and which we have carried to perfection. This ex- 
traordinary man saw his fame somewhat diminishing by 
a rumour that his brother John Vincent had a great 
share in the composition of his works ; but this never 

* These interesting letters are .preserved in Count Baldelli's "Life 
of Boccaccio," p. 115. 



2Si LITERARY CHARACTER. 

disturbed him ; and Peiresc, in an interesting account of 
a visit to this celebrated Neapolitan, observed, that 
though now now aged and grey-haired, he treated his 
younger brother as a son. These single-hearted brothers, 
who would not marry that they might never be separated, 
knew of but one fame, and that was the fame of Porta. 

Goffuet, the author of "The Origin of the Arts and 
Sciences," bequeathed his MSS. and his books to his friend 
Fugere, with whom he had long united his affections and 
his studies, that his surviving friend might proceed with 
them: but the author had died of a slow and painful dis- 
order, which Fugere had watched by his side, in silent 
despair. The sight of those MSS. and books was the 
friend's death-stroke; half his soul, which had once given 
them animation, was parted from him, and a few weeks 
terminated his own days. When Lloyd heard of the 
death of Churchill, he neither wished to survive him, nor 
did.* The Abbe de St. Pierre gave an interesting proof 
of literary friendship for Varignon, the geometrician. 
They were of congenial dispositions, and St. Pierre, when 
he went to Paris, could not endure to part with Varignon, 
who was too poor to accompany him ; and St. Pierre was 
not rich. A certain income, however moderate, was 
necessary for the tranquil pursuits of geometry. St. 
Pierre presented Varignon with a portion of his small 
income, accompanied by that delicacy of feeling which 
men of genius who know each other can best conceive : 
"I do not give it you," said St. Pierre, "as a salary 

* This event is thus told by Southey : " The news of Churchill's death 
was somewhat abruptly announced to Lloyd as he sat at dinner ; he 
was seized with a sudden sickness, and saying, ' I shall follow poor 
Charles,' took to his bed, from which he never rose again ; dying, if 
ever man died, of a broken heart. The tragedy did not end here : 
Churchill's favourite sister, who is said to have possessed much of 
her brother's sense, and spirit, and genius, and to have been betrothed 
to Lloyd, attended him during his illness, and sinking under the double 
loss, soon followed her brother and her lover to the grave." — Ed. 



LITERARY FRIENDSHIPS. 285 

but as an annuity, that you may be independent and quit 
me when you dislike me." The same circumstance occur- 
red between Akenside and Dyson. Dyson, when the 
poet was in great danger of adding one more illustrious 
name to the " Calamities of Authors," interposed between 
him and ill-fortune, by allowing him an annuity of three 
hundred a-year ; and, when he found the fame of his lit- 
erary friend attacked, although not in the habit of com- 
position, he published a defence of his poetical and phi- 
losophical character. The name and character of Dyson 
have been suffered to die away, without a single tribute 
of even biographical sympathy ; as that of Longueville, 
the modest patron of Butler, in whom that great political 
satirist found what the careless ingratitude of a court 
had denied : but in the record of literary glory, the pa- 
tron's name should be inscribed by the side of the literary 
character : for the public incurs an obligation whenever 
a man of genius is protected. 

The statesman Fouquet, deserted by all others, wit- 
nessed La Fontaine hastening every literary man to his 
prison-gate. Many have inscribed their works to their 
disgraced patrons, as Pope did so nobly to the Earl of 
Oxford in the Tower : 

When interest calls off all her sneaking train, 
And all the obliged desert, and all the vain, 
They wait, or to the scaffold, or the cell, 
"When the last lingering friend has bid farewell. 

Literary friendship is a sympathy not of manners, but 
of feelings. The personal character may happen to be 
very opposite : the vivacious may be loved by the melan- 
cholic, and the wit by the man of learning. He who is 
vehement and vigorous will feel himself a double man 
by the side of the friend who is calm and subtle. "When 
we observe such friendships, we are apt to imagine that 
they are not real because the characters are dissimilar ; 
but it is their common tastes and pursuits which form a 



286 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

bond of union. Pomponius Lsetus, so called from his natu- 
ral good-humour, was the personal friend of Hcrmolaus 
Barbarus, whose saturnine and melancholy disposition he 
often exhilarated ; the warm, impetuous Lather was the 
beloved friend of the mild and amiable Melancthon ; the 
caustic Boileau was the companion of Racine and Mo- 
liere; and France, perhaps, owes the chefs-cVceuvre of her 
tragic and her comic poet to her satirist. The delicate 
taste and the refining ingenuity of Hurd only attached 
him the more to the impetuous and dogmatic Warbur- 
ton.* No men could be more opposite in personal char- 
acter than the careless, gay, and hasty Steele, and the 
cautious, serious, and the elegant Addison ; yet no liter- 
ary friendship was more fortunate than their union. 

One glory is reserved for literary friendship. The 
friendship of a great name indicates the greatness of the 
character who appeals to it. When Sydenham mentioned, 
as a proof of the excellence of his method of treating 
acute diseases, that it had received the approbation of 
his illustrious friend Locke, the philosopher's opinion 
contributed to the physician's success. 

Such have been the friendships of great literary char- 
acters ; but too true it is, that they have not always con- 
tributed thus largely to their mutual happiness. The 
querulous lament of Gleim to Klopstock is too generally 
participated. As Gleim lay on his death-bed he addressed 
the great bard of Germany — " I am dying, dear Klop- 
stock ; and, as a dying man will I say, in this world we 
have not lived long enough together and for each other ; 
but in vain would we now recal the past !" What ten- 
derness in the reproach! What self-accusation in its 
modesty ! 

* For a full account of their literary career see the first article in 
" Quarrels of Authors." 



PERSONAL CHARACTER. 287 



CHAPTER XX. 

The literary and the personal character. — The personal dispositions of 
an author may be the reverse of those -which, appear in his 
writings. — Erroneous conceptions of the character of distant 
authors. — Paradoxical appearances in the history of Genius. — Why 
the character of the man may be opposite to that of his writings. 

ARE the personal dispositions of an author discover- 
able in his writings, as those of an artist are 
imagined to appear in his works, where Michael Angelo 
is always great, and Raphael ever graceful ? 

Is the moralist a moral man ? Is he malignant- ' ~io 
publishes caustic satires ? Is he a libertine who t ^ ,s 
loose poems ? And is he, whose imagination del ^nts in 
terror and in blood, the very monster he paints ? - 

Many licentious writers have led chaste lives. La 
Mothe le Yayer wrote two works of a free nature ; yet 
his was the unblemished life of a retired sage. Bayle is 
the too faithful compiler of impurities, but he resisted the 
voluptuousness of the senses as much as Newton. La 
Fontaine wrote tales fertile in intrigue, yet the "bon- 
homme" has not left on record a single ingenious amour 
of his own. The Queen of Navarre's Tales are gross im- 
itations of Boccaccio's; but she herself was a princess of 
irreproachable habits, and had given proof of the most 
rigid virtue ; but stories of intrigues, told in a natural 
style, formed the fashionable literature of the day, and 
the genius of the female writer was amused in becoming 
an historian without being an actor. Fortiguerra, the 
author of the Ricciardetto, abounds with loose and licen- 
tious descriptions, and yet neither his manners nor his 
personal character were stained by the offending freedom 
of- his inventions. Smollett's character is immaculate; 
yet he has described two scenes which offend even in the 



288 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

license of imagination. Cowley, who boasts with such 
gaiety of the versatility of his passion among so many mis- 
tresses, wanted even the confidence to address one. Thus, 
licentious writers may be very chaste persons. The imag- 
ination maybe a volcano while the heart is an Alp of ice. 
Turn to the moralist — there we find Seneca, a usurer 
of seven millions, writing on moderate desires on a table 
of gold. Sallust, who so eloquently declaims against the 
licentiousness of the age, was repeatedly accused in the 
senate of public and habitual debaucheries; and when 
this inveigher against the spoilers of provinces attained 
to a remote government, he pillaged like Verres. That 
" Demosthenes was more capable of recommending than 
of imitating the virtues of our ancestors," is the observa- 
tion of Plutarch. Lucian, when young, declaimed against 
the iiiendship of the great, as another name for servitude ; 
"*Vw but when his talents procured him a situation under 

""N^ the emperor, he facetiously compared himself to those 
quacks who, themselves plagued by a perpetual cough, 
offer to sell an infallible remedy for one. Sir Thomas 
More, in his " Utopia," declares that no man ought to be 
punished for his religion ; yet he became a fierce perse- 
cutor, flogging and racking men for his own " true faith." 
At the moment the poet Rousseau was giving versions of 
the Psalms, full of unction, as our Catholic neighbours 
express it, he was profaning the same pen with infamous 
epigrams ; and an erotic poet of our times has composed 
night-hymns in churchyards with the same ardour with 
which he poured forth Anacreontics. Napoleon said of 
Bernardin St. Pierre, whose writings breathe the warm 
principles of humanity and social happiness in every 
page, that he was one of the worst private characters in 
France. I have heard this from other quarters ; it startles 
one ! The pathetic genius of Sterne played about his 
head, but never reached his heart.* Cardinal Richelieu 

* See what is said on this subject in the article on Sterne in the 
"Literary Miscellanies," of the present volume. 



PERSONAL DISPOSITION. 289 

wrote " The Perfection of a Christian, or the Life of a 
Christian ;" yet "was he an ntter stranger to Gospel max- 
ims ; and Frederick the Great, when yonng, published his 
" Anti-Machiavel," and deceived the world by the promise 
of a pacific reign. This military genius protested against 
those political arts which he afterwards adroitly practised, 
uniting the lion's head with the fox's tail — and thus him- 
self realising the political monster 'of Machiavel ! 

And thus also is it with the personal dispositions of an 
author, which may be quite the reverse from those which 
appear in his writings. Johnson would not believe that 
Horace was a happy man because his verses were cheer- 
ful, any more than he could think Pope so, because the 
poet is continually informing us of it. It surprised 
Spence when Pope told him that Rowe, the tragic poet, 
whom he had considered so solemn a personage, " would 
laugh all day long, and do nothing else but laugh." 
Lord Kaimes says, that Arbuthnot must have been a 
great genius, for he exceeded Swift and Addison in 
humorous painting; although we are informed he had 
nothing of that peculiarity in his character. Young, 
who is constantly contemning preferment in his writings, 
was all his life pining after it ; and the conversation of 
the sombrous author of the " Mght Thoughts " was of 
the most volatile kind, abounding with trivial puns. He 
was one of the first who subscribed to the assembly at 
Wellwyn. Mrs. Carter, who greatly admired his sublime 
poetry, expressing her surprise at his social converse, he 
replied, " Madam, there is much difference between writ- 
ing and talking." 

Moliere, on the contrary, whose humour is so perfectly 
comic, and even ludicrous, was thoughtful and serious, 
and even melancholy. His strongly-featured physiog- 
nomy exhibits the face of a great tragic, rather than of a 
great comic, poet. Boileau called Moliere " The Contem- 
plative Man." Those who make the world laugh often 

19 



290 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

themselves laugh the least. A famous and witty harle- 
quin of France was overcome with hypochondriasis and 
consulted a physician, who, after inquiring about his mal- 
ady, told his miserable patient, that he knew of no other 
medicine for him than to take frequent doses of Carlin. — 
" I am Carlin himself," exclaimed the melancholy man, in 
despair. Burton, the pleasant and vivacious author of 
" The Anatomy of Melancholy," of whom it is noticed, 
that he could in an interval of vapours raise laughter in 
any company, in his chamber was " mute and mopish," 
and at last was so overcome by that intellectual disorder, 
which he appeared to have got rid of by writing his 
volume, that it is believed he closed his life in a fit of 
melancholy.* 

Could one have imagined that the brilliant wit, the luxu- 
riant raillery, and the fine and deep sense of Pascal, 
could have combined with the most opposite qualities — 
the hypochondriasm and bigotry of an ascetic ? Roche- 
foucauld, in private life, was a conspicuous example of 
all those moral qualities of which he seemed to deny the 
existence, and exhibited in this respect a striking con- 
trast to the Cardinal de Retz, who has presumed to cen- 
sure him for his want of faith in the reality of virtue ; 
but De Retz himself was the unbeliever in disinterested 
virtue. This great genius was one of those pretended 
patriots destitute of a single one of the virtues for which 
he was the clamorous advocate of faction. 

When Valincour attributed the excessive tenderness in 
the tragedies of Racine to the poet's own impassioned 
character, the son amply showed that his father was by 
no means the slave of love. Racine never wrote a single 
love-poem, nor even had a mistress ; and his wife had 
never read his tragedies, for poetry was not her delight. 

* It is reported of him that his only mode of alleviating his melan- 
choly was by walking from his college at Oxford to the bridge, to listen 
to the rough jokes of the bargemen. 



PERSONAL DISPOSITION. 291 

Racine's motive for making love the constant source of 
action in his tragedies, was from the principle which has 
influenced so many poets, who usually conform to the 
prevalent taste of the times. In the court of a young 
monarch it was necessary that heroes should be lovers ; 
Corneille had nobly run in one career, and Racine could 
not have existed as a great poet had he not rivalled him 
in an opposite one. The tender Racine was no lover; 
but he was a subtle and epigrammatic observer, before 
whom his convivial friends never cared to open their 
minds ; and the caustic Boileau truly said of him, " Racine 
is far more malicious than I am." 

Alfieri speaks of his mistress as if he lived with her in 
the most unreserved familiarity; the reverse was the 
case. And the gratitude and affection with which he 
describes his mother, and which she deserved, entered 
so little into his habitual feelings, that, after their early 
separation, he never saw her but once, though he often 
passed through the country where she resided. 

Johnson has composed a beautiful Rambler, describing 
the pleasures which result from the influence of good- 
humour ; and somewhat remarkably says, " Without 
good-humour, learning and bravery can be only formida- 
ble, and confer that superiority which swells the heart of 
the lion in the desert, where he roars without reply, and 
ravages without resistance." He who could so finely 
discover the happy influence of this pleasing quality was 
himself a stranger to it, and " the roar and the ravage" 
were familiar to our lion. Men of genius frequently sub- 
stitute their beautiful imagination for spontaneous and 
natural sentiment. It is not therefore surprising if we ; 
are often erroneous in the conception we form of the per- 
sonal character of a distant author. Klopstock, the 
votary of the muse of Zion, so astonished and warmed 
the sage Bodmer, that he invited the inspired bard to his 
house : but his visitor shocked the grave professor, when, 



292 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

instead of a poet rapt in silent meditatkh, a volatile 
youth leaped out of the chaise, who was an enthusiast for 
retirement only when writing verses. An artist, whose 
pictures exhibit a series of scenes of domestic tenderness, 
awakening all the charities of private life, I have heard, 
participated in them in no other way than on his canvas. 
Evelyn, who has written in favour of active life, "loved 
and lived in retirement ;" * while Sir George Mackenzie, 
who had been continually in the bustle of business, framed 
a eulogium on solitude. We see in Machiavel's code of 
tyranny, of depravity, and of criminal violence, a horrid 
picture of human nature; but this retired philosopher 
was a friend to the freedom of his country ; he partici- 
pated in none of the crimes he had recorded, but drew 
up these systemized crimes " as an observer, not as a 
criminal." Drummond, whose sonnets still retain the 
beauty and the sweetness and the delicacy of the most 
amiable imagination, was a man of a harsh irritable tem- 
per, and has been thus characterised : — 

Testie Drummond could not speak for fretting. 

Thus authors and artists may yield no certain indica- 
tion of their personal characters in their works. Incon- 
stant men will write on constancy, and licentious minds 
may elevate themselves into poetry and piety. We 
should be unjust to some of the greatest geniuses if the 

* Since this was written the correspondence of Evelyn has appeared, 
by which we find that he apologised to Cowley for having published 
this very treatise, which seemed to condemn that life of study and 
privacy to which they were both equally attached ; and confesses that 
the whole must be considered as a mere sportive effusion, requesting 
that Cowley would not suppose its principles formed his private opin- 
ions. Thus Leibnitz, we are told, laughed at the fanciful system 
revealed in his Tkeodicee, and acknowledged that he never wrote it in 
earnest ; that a philosopher is not always obliged to write seriously, 
and that to invent an hypothesis is only a proof of the force of im- 
agination. 



MONTAIGNE. 293 

extraordinary sentiments which they put into the mouths 
of their dramatic personages are maliciously to be applied 
to themselves. Euripides was accused of atheism when 
he introduced a denier of the gods on the stage. Milton 
has been censured by Clarke for the impiety of Satan ; 
and an enemy of Shakspeare might have reproached him 
for his perfect delineation of the accomplished villain 
Iago, as it was said that Dr. Moore was hurt in the opin- 
ions of some by his odious Zeluco. Crebillon complains 
of this :— " They charge me with all the iniquities of 
Atreus, and they consider me in some places as a wretch 
with whom it is unfit to associate ; as if all which the 
mind invents must be derived from the heart." This 
poet offers a striking instance of the little alliance exist- 
ing between the literary and personal dispositions of an 
author. Crebillon, who exulted, on his entrance into the 
French Academy, that he had never tinged his pen with 
the gall of satire, delighted to strike on the most harrow- 
ing string of the tragic lyre. In his Atreus the father 
drinks the blood of his son; in his JRhadamistus the son 
expires under the hand of the father ; in his JElectra the 
son assassinates the mother. A poet is a painter of the 
soul, but a great artist is not therefore a bad man. 

Montaigne appears to have been sensible of this fact 
in the literary character. Of authors, he says, he likes 
to read their little anecdotes and private passions : — " Car 
j'ai une singuliere curiosite de connaitre l'ame et les naifs 
jugemens de mes auteurs. II faut bien juger leur suffi- 
sance, mais non pas leurs moeurs, ni eux, par cette montre 
de leurs ecrits qu'ils etalent au theatre du monde." 
Which may be thus translated : " For I have a singular 
curiosity to know the soul and simple opinions of my 
authors. We must judge of their ability, but not of 
their manners, nor of themselves, by that show of their 
writings which they display on the theatre of the world." 
This is very just; are we yet sure, however, that the 



294 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

simplicity of this old favourite of Europe might not have 
been as much a theatrical gesture as the sentimentality 
of Sterne ? The great authors of the Port-Royal Logic 
have raised severe objections to prove that Montaigne 
was not quite so open in respect to those simple details 
which he imagined might diminish his personal import- 
ance with his readers. He pretends that he reveals all 
his infirmities and weaknesses, while he is perpetually 
passing himself off for something more than he is. He 
carefully informs us that he has " a page," the usual at- 
tendant of an independent gentleman, and lives in an old 
family chateau ; when the fact was, that his whole reve- 
nue did not exceed six thousand livres, a state beneath 
mediocrity. He is also equally careful not to drop any 
mention of his having a clerk xoith a bag ; for he was a 
counsellor of Bordeaux, but affected the gentleman and 
the soldier. He trumpets himself forth for having been 
mayor of Bordeaux, as this offered an opportunity 
of telling us that he succeeded Marshal Biron, and re- 
signed it to Marshal Matismon. Could he have disco v- 
ered that any marshal had been a lawyer he would not 
have sunk that part of his life. Montaigne himself has 
said, " that in forming a judgment of a man's life, par- 
ticular regard should be paid to his behaviour at the end 
of it ;" and he more than once tells us that the chief 
study of his life is to die calm and silent ; and that he 
will plunge himself headlong and stupidly into death, as 
into an obscure abyss, which swallows one up in an in- 
stant ; that to die was the affair of a moment's suffering, 
and required no precepts. He talked of reposing on the 
" pillow of doubt." But how did this great philosopher 
die ? He called for the more powerful opiates of the in- 
fallible church ! The mass was performed in his cham- 
ber, and, in rising to embrace it, his hands dropped and 
failed him ; thus, as Professor Dugald Stewart observes 
on this philosopher — " He expired in performing what his 



t 

CONTRASTS, PERSONAL AND LITERARY. 295 

old preceptor, Buchanan, would not have scrupled to 
describe as an act of idolatry." 

We must not then consider that he who paints vice 
with energy is therefore vicious, lest we injure an hon- 
ourable man ; nor must we imagine that he who celebrates 
virtue is therefore virtuous, for we may then repose on 
a heart which knowing the right pursues the wrong. 

These paradoxical appearances in the history of gen- 
ius present a curious moral phenomenon. Much must be 
attributed to the plastic nature of the versatile faculty 
itself. 'Unquestionably many men of genius have often 
resisted the indulgence of one talent to exercise another 
with equal power ; and some, who have solely composed 
sermons, could have touched on the foibles of society 
with the spirit of Horace or Juvenal. Blackstone and 
Sir William Jones directed that genius to the austere 
studies of law and philology, which might have excelled 
in the poetical and historical character. So versatile is 
this faculty of genius, that its possessors are sometimes 
uncertain of the manner in which they shall treat their 
subject, whether gravely or ludicrously. When Breboeuf, 
the French translator of the Pharsalia of Lucan, had com- 
pleted the first book as it now appears, he at the same 
time composed a burlesque version, and sent both to the 
great arbiter of taste in that day, to decide which the 
poet should continue. The decision proved to be diffi- 
cult. Are there not writers who, with all the vehemence 
of genius, by adopting one principle can make all things 
shrink into the pigmy form of ridicule, or by adopting 
another principle startle us by the gigantic monsters of 
their own exaggerated imagination ? On this principle, 
of the versatility of the faculty, a production of genius 
is a piece of art which, wrought up to its full effect with 
a felicity of manner acquired by taste and habit, is 
merely the result of certain arbitrary combinations of 
the mind. 



I 

296 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

Are we then to reduce the works of a man of genius 
to a mere sport of his talents — a game in which he is 
only the best player? Can he whose secret power raises 
so many emotions in our breasts be without any in his 
own? A mere actor performing a part? Is he unfeeling 
when he is pathetic, indifferent when he is indignant? 
Is he an alien to all the wisdom and virtue he inspires ? 
No ! were men of genius themselves to assert this, and 
it is said some incline so to do, there is a more certain con- 
viction than their misconceptions, in our own conscious- 
ness, which for ever assures us, that deep feelings and ele- 
vated thoughts can alone spring from those who feel 
deeply and think nobly. 

In proving that the character of the man may be very 
opposite to that of his writings, we must recollect that 
the habits of the life may be contrary to the habits of 
the mind.* The influence of their studies over men of 
genius is limited. Out of the ideal world, man' is re- 
duced to be the active creature of sensation. An au- 
thor has, in truth, two distinct characters : the literary, 
formed by the habits of his study ; the personal, by the 
habits of his situation. Gray, cold, effeminate, and timid 
in his personal, was lofty and awful in his literary char- 
acter. We see men of polished manners and bland affec- 
tions, who, in grasping a pen, are thrusting a jponiard ; 
while others in domestic life with the simplicity of chil- 
dren and the feebleness of nervous affections, can shake 
the senate or the bar with the vehemence of their elo- 
quence and the intrepidity of their spirit. The writings 

* Nothing is more delightful to me in my researches on the literary- 
character than when I find in persons of unquestionable and high 
genius the results of my own discoveries. This circumstance has fre- 
quently happened to confirm my principles. Long after this was pub- 
lished, Madame de Stael made this important confession in her recent 
work, "Dix Annees d'Exil," p. 154. ''Je ne pouvais me dissimuler 
que je n'etais pas une personne courage use : j'ai de la hardiesse dans 
Yimagination, mais de la timidite dans le caradere." 



CONTRASTS, PERSONAL AND LITERARY. 297 

of the famous Baptista Porta are marked by the boldness 
of his genius, which formed a singular contrast with the 
pusillanimity of his conduct when menaced or attacked. 
The heart may be feeble, though the mind is strong. To 
think boldly may be the habit of the mind, to act weakly 
may be the habit of the constitution. 

However the personal character may contrast with 
that of their genius, still are the works themselves gen- 
uine, and exist as realities for us — and were so, doubtless, 
to the composers themselves in the act of composition. 
In the calm of study, a beautiful imagination may con- 
vert him whose morals are corrupt into an admirable 
moralist, awakening feelings which yet may be cold in 
the business of life: as we have shown that the phleg- 
matic can excite himself into wit, and the cheerful man 
delight in " Night Thoughts." Sallust, the corrupt Sal- 
lust, might retain the most sublime conceptions of the 
virtues which were to save the Republic ; and Sterne, 
whose heart was not so susceptible in ordinary occur- 
rences, while he was gradually creating incident after 
incident and touching successive emotions, in the stories 
of Le Fevre and Maria, might have thrilled — like some of 
his readers. Many have mourned over the wisdom or the 
virtue they contemplated, mortified at their own infirmity. 
Thus, though there may be no identity between the book 
and the man, still for us an author is ever an abstract 
being, and, as one of the Fathers said — " A dead man 
may sin dead, leaving books that make others sin." An 
author's wisdom or his folly does not die with him. The 
volume, not the author, is our companion, and is for us 
a real* personage, performing before us whatever it in- 
spires — " He being dead, yet speaketh." Such is the 
vitality of a book ! 



LITERARY CHARACTER. 



CHAPTER XXI. 

The man of letters. — Occupies an intermediate station between authors 
and readers. — His solitude described. — Often the father of genius. — 
Atticus, a man of letters of antiquity.— The perfect character of a 
modern man of letters exhibited in Peiresc. — Their utility to authors 
and artists. 

AMOXG the active members of the literary republic, 
there is a class whom formerly we distinguished by 
the title of Men of Letters — a title which, with us, has 
nearly gone out of currency, though I do not think that 
the general term of " literary men " would be sufficiently 
appropriate. 

The man of letters, whose habits and whose whole life 
so closely resemble those of an author, can only be dis- 
tinguished by this simple circumstance, that the man of 
letters is not an author. 

Yet he whose sole occupation through life is literature 
— he who is always acquiring and never producing, ap- 
pears as ridiculous as the architect who never raised an 
edifice, or the statuary who refrains from sculpture. His 
pursuits are reproached with terminating in an epicurean 
selfishness, and amidst his incessant avocations he him- 
self is considered as a particular sort of idler. 

This race of literary characters, as we now find them, 
could not have appeared till the press had poured forth 
its affluence. In the degree that the nations of Europe 
became literary, was that philosophical curiosity kindled 
which induced some to devote their fortunes and their 
days, and to experience some of the purest of human 
enjoyments in preserving and familiarising themselves 
with " the monuments of vanished minds," as books are 
called- by D'Avenant with so much sublimity. Their 
expansive library presents an indestructible history of 



MEN OF LETTERS. 299 

the genius of every people, through all their eras — and 
whatever men have thought and whatever men have 
done, were at length discovered in books. 

Men of letters occupy an intermediate station between 
authors and readers. They are gifted with more curi- 
osity of knowledge, and more multiplied tastes, and by 
those precious collections which they are forming during 
their lives, are more completely furnished with the means 
than are possessed by the multitude who read, and the 
few who write. 

The studies of an author are usually restricted to par- 
ticular subjects. His tastes are tinctured by their colour- 
ing, his mind is always shaping itself by their form. An 
author's works form his solitary pride, and his secret 
power ; while half his life wears away in the slow matu- 
rity of composition, and still the ambition of authorship 
torments its victim alike in disappointment or in posses- 
sion. 

But soothing is the solitude of the Man - of Lettees ! 
View the busied inhabitant of the library surrounded by 
the objects of his love ! He possesses them — and they 
possess him ! These volumes — images of our mind and 
passions ! — as he traces them from Herodotus to Gibbou, 
from Homer to Shakspeare — those portfolios which gather 
up the inventions of genius, and that selected cabinet of 
medals which holds so many unwritten histories ; — some 
favourite sculptures and pictures, and some antiquities 
of all nations, here and there about his house — these are 
his furniture ! 

In his unceasing occupations the only repose he re- 
quires, consists not in quitting, but in changing them. 
Every day produces its discovery ; every day in the life 
of a man of letters may furnish a multitude of emotions 
and of ideas. For him there is a silence amidst the 
world ; and in the scene ever opening before him, all that 
has passed is acted over again, and all that is to come 



300 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

poems wealed as in a nsioa Often his library is i 
tiguons to his chamber, and this domain i sed 

apta," this contracted space, baa often marked the "boun- 
dary of the existence of the opulent owner, who 1 
where he will die, contracting his day- into hours; and a 
whole life thai passed is found too short to clot* 
signs. Such are the men who have not been unhappily 
described bj tie- Hollander! as Uef-hebber$ 9 \i fan- 

ciers, and their collection as litf-hebb&y y things of their 
love. The Dutch call everything for which they are im- 
paasioned U tfK Mer y } hut tljeir feeling being much 
Stronger than their delicacy, they apply the term to every 
thing, from poesy and picture to tulips and tohacco. The 
term want- the melody of the languages of genius; but 
something parallel is required to correct that indiscrimi- 
nate notion which most persons associate with that of 
colh rtcyrs. 

It was fancifully said of one of these lovers, in the style 
of the age, that, "Hi- book was his bride, and his study 
his bride-chamber." Many have voluntarily relinquished 
a public station and their rank in society, neglecting even 
their fortune and their health, for the life of self-oblivion 

* The contiguity of the citajieer to the library is not the solitary 
fancy of an individual, but marks the class. Early in life, when in 
France and Holland, I met with several of these amateurs, who had 
bounded their lives by the circle of their collections, and wore rarely 
seen out of them. The late Duke of Roxburgh once expressed his de- 
light to a literary friend of mine, that he had only to step from hia 
sleeping apartment into his fine library ; so that he could command, at 
all moments, the gratification of pursuing his researches while he in- 
dulged his reveries. The Chevalier Yerhulst. of Bruxelles. of whom we 
have a curious portrait prefixed to the catalogue of his pictures and 
curiosities, was one of those men of letters who experienced this strong 
affection for his collection?, and to such a degree, that he never went 
out of his house for twenty year3 ; where, however, he kept up a 
courteous intercourse with the lovers of art and literature. He was an 
enthusiastic votary of Rubens, of whom he has written a copious life 
in Dutch, the only work he appears to have composed. 



BOOK COLLECTORS. 301 

of the man of letters. Count De Caylus expended a 
princely income in the study and the encouragement of 
Art. He passed his mornings among the studios of art- 
ists, watching their progress, increasing his collections, 
and closing his day in the retirement of his own cabinet. 
His rank and his opulence were no obstructions to his 
settled habits. Cicero himself, in his happier moments, 
addressing Atticus, exclaimed — " I had much rather be 
sitting on your little bench under Aristotle's picture, 
than in the curule chairs of our great ones." This wish 
was probably sincere, and reminds us of another great 
politician who in his secession from public affairs retreated 
to a literary life, where he appears suddenly to have dis- 
covered a new-found world. Fox's favourite line, which 
he often repeated, was — 

How various his employments whom the world 
Calls idle I 

De Sacy, one of the Port-Royalists, was fond of repeat- 
ing this lively remark of a man of wit — " That all the 
mischief in the world comes from not being able to keep 
ourselves quiet in our room." 

But tranquillity is essential to the existence of the 
man of letters — an unbroken and devotional tranquillity. 
For though, unlike the author, his occupations are inter- 
rupted without inconvenience, and resumed without effort ; 
yet if the painful realities of life break into this vision- 
ary world of literature and art, there is an atmosphere 
of taste about him which will be dissolved, and har- 
monious ideas which will be chased away, as it happens 
when something is violently flung among the trees where 
the birds are singing — all instantly disperse ! 

Even to quit their collections for a short time is a real 
suffering to these lovers ; everything which surrounds 
them becomes endeared by habit, and by some higher as- 
sociations. Men of letters have died with grief from hav- 



302 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

ing been forcibly deprived of the use of their libraries. 
De Thou, with all a brother's sympathy, in his great his- 
tory, has recorded the sad fates of several who had wit- 
nessed their collections dispersed in the civil wars of 
France, or had otherwise been deprived of their precious 
volumes. Sir Robert Cotton fell ill, and betrayed, in 
the ashy paleness of his countenance, the misery which 
killed him on the sequestration of his collections. "They 
have broken my heart who have locked up my library 
from me," was his lament. 

If this passion for acquisition and enjoyment be so 
strong and exquisite, what wonder that these "lovers" 
should regard all things as valueless in comparison with 
the objects of their love ? There seem to be spells 
in their collections, and in their fascination they have 
often submitted to the ruin of their personal, but not of 
their internal enjoyments. They have scorned to bal- 
ance in the scales the treasures of literature and art, 
though imperial magnificence once was ambitious to out- 
weigh them. 

Van Praun, a friend of Albert Durer's, of whom we 
possess a catalogue of pictures and prints, was one of 
these enthusiasts of taste. The Emperor of Germany, 
probably desirous of finding a royal road to a rare col- 
lection, sent an agent to procure the present one entire ; 
and that some delicacy might be observed with such a 
man, the purchase was to be proposed in the form of a 
mutual exchange ; the emperor had gold, pearls, and dia- 
monds. Our lief-hebber having silently listened to the 
imperial agent, seemed astonished that such things should 
be considered as equivalents for a collection of works of 
art, which had required a long life of experience and 
many previous studies and practised tastes to have form- 
ed, and compared with which gold, pearls, and diamonds, 
afforded but a mean, an unequal, and a barbarous barter. 

If the man of letters be less dependent on others for 



BOOK COLLECTOES. 303 

the very perception of his own existence than men of 
the world are, his solitude, however, is not that of a des- 
ert : for all there tends to keep alive those concentrated 
feelings which cannot be indulged with security, or even 
without ridicule in general society. Like the Lucullus 
of Plutarch, he would not only live among the votaries 
of literature, but would live for them ; he throws open 
his library, his gallery, and his cabinet, to all the Gre- 
cians. Such men are the fathers of genius ; they seem to 
possess an aptitude in discovering those minds which are 
clouded over by the obscurity of their situations ; and it 
is they who so frequently project those benevolent insti- 
tutions, where they have poured out the philanthropy of 
their hearts in that world which they appear to have for- 
saken. If Europe be literary, to whom does she owe this 
more than to these men of letters ? Is it not to their 
noble passion of amassing through life those magnificent 
collections, which often bear the names of their founders 
from the gratitude of a following age ? Venice, Flor- 
ence, and Copenhagen, Oxford, and London, attest the 
existence of their labours. Our Bodleys and our Har- 
leys, our Cottons and our Sloanes, our Cracherodes, our 
Townleys, and our Banks, were of this race ! * In the 
perpetuity of their own studies they felt as if they were 
extending human longevity, by throwing an unbroken 
light of knowledge into the next age. The private 

* Sir Thomas Bodley. in 1602, first brought the old libraries at Ox- 
ford into order for the benefit of students, and added thereto his own 
noble collection. That of Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford (died 1724), 
was purchased by the country, and is now in the British Museum ; and 
also are the other collections named above. Sir Robert Cotton died 
1631 ; his collection is remarkable for its historic documents and state- 
papers. Sir Hans Sloane's collections may be said to be the foundation, 
of the British Museum, and were purchased by Government for 20,000Z. 
after his death, in 1T49. Of Cracherode and Townley some notice will 
be found on p. 2 of the present volume. Sir Joseph Banks and his sister 
made large bequests to the same national establishment. — Ed. 



304 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

acquisitions of a solitary man of letters during half a 
century have become public endowments. A generous 
enthusiasm inspired these intrepid labours, and their vol- 
tary privations of what the world calls its pleasures 
and its honours, would form an interesting history not 
yet written ; their due, yet undischarged. 

But " men of the world," as they are emphatically dis- 
tinguished, imagine that a man so lifeless in "the world" 
must be one of the dead in it, and, with mistaken wit? 
would inscribe over the sepulchre of his library, "Here 
lies the body of our friend." If the man of letters have 
voluntarily quitted their " world," at least he has passed 
into another, where he enjoys a sense of existence 
through a long succession of ages, and where Time, who 
destroys all things for others, for him only preserves and 
discovers. This world is best described by one who has 
lingered among its inspirations. " We are wafted into 
other times and strange lands, connecting us by a sad 
but exalting relationship with the great events and 
great minds which have passed away. Our studies at 
once cherish and control the imagination, by leading 
it over an unbounded range of the noblest scenes 
in the overawing company of departed wisdom and 
genius." * 

Living more with books than with men, which is often 
becoming better acquainted with man himself, though 
not always with men, the man of letters is more tolerant 
of opinions than opinionists are among themselves. Nor 
are his views of human affairs contracted to the day, like 
those who, in the heat and hurry of a too active life, pre- 
fer expedients to principles ; men who deem themselves 
politicians because they are not moralists ; to whom the 
centuries behind have conveyed no results, and who 
cannot see how the present time is always full of the 

* " Quarterly Review," No. xzxiii., p. 146. 



LIVING WITH BOOKS. 305 

future. "Everything," says the lively Burnet, "must 
be brought to the nature of tinder or gunpowder, ready 
for a spark to set it on fire," before they discover it. 
The man of letters indeed is accused of a cold indiffer- 
ence to the interests which divide society ; he is rarely 
observed as the head or the "rump of a party;" he 
views at a distance their temporary passions — those 
mighty beginnings, of which he knows the miserable 
terminations. 

Antiquity presents the character of a perfect man of 
letters in Atticus, who retreated from a political to a 
literary life. Had his letters accompanied those of 
Cicero, they would have illustrated the ideal character 
of his class. But the sage Atticus rejected a popular ce- 
lebrity for a passion not less powerful, yielding up his 
whole soul to study. Cicero, with all his devotion to 
literature, was at the same time agitated by another kind 
of glory, and the most perfect author in Rome imagined 
that he was enlarging his honours by the intrigues of 
the consulship. He has distinctly marked the character 
of the man of letters in the person of his friend Atticus, 
for which he has expressed his respect, although he could 
not content himself with its imitation. " I know," says 
this man of genius and ambition, " I know the greatness 
and ingenuousness of your soul, nor have I found any 
difference between us, but in a different choice of life ; a 
certain sort of ambition has led me earnestly to seek 
after honours, while other motives, by no means blame- 
able induced you to adopt an honourable leisure; 
honestum otium"* These motives appear in the in- 
teresting memoirs of this man of letters ; a contempt of 
political intrigues combined with a desire to escape from 
the splendid bustle of Rome to the learned leisure of 
Athens. He wished to dismiss a pompous train of slaves 



* "Ad Atticum," Lib. i., Ep. 11 
20 



306 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

for the delight of assembling under his roof a literary 
society of readers and transcribers. And having col- 
lected under that roof the portraits or busts of the illus- 
trious men of his country, inspired by their spirit and 
influenced by their virtues or their genius, he inscribed 
under them, in concise verses, the characters of their 
mind. Valuing wealth only for its use, a dignified econ- 
omy enabled him to be profuse, and a moderate expendi- 
ture allowed him to be generous. 

The result of this literary life was the strong affections 
of the Athenians. At the first opportunity the absence 
of the man of lette i offered, they raised a statue to him, 
conferring on our Pomponius the fond surname of Atti- 
cus. To have received a name from the voice of the city 
they inhabited has happened to more than one man of 
letters. Pinelli, born a Neapolitan, but residing at 
Venice, among other peculiar honours received from the 
senate, was there distinguished by the affectionate title 
of " the Venetian." 

Yet such a character as Atticus could not escape cen- 
sure from " men of the world." They want the heart 
and the imagination to conceive something better than 
themselves. The happy indifference, perhaps the con- 
tempt of our Atticus for rival factions, they have stigma- 
tised as a cold neutrality, a timid pusillanimous hypoc- 
risy. Yet Atticus could not have been a mutual friend, 
had not both parties alike held the man of letters as a 
sacred being amidst their disguised ambition; and the 
urbanity of Atticus, while it balanced the fierceness of 
two heroes, Pompey and Caesar, could even temper the 
rivalry of genius in the orators Hortensius and Cicero. 
A great man of our own country widely differed from 
the accusers of Atticus. Sir Matthew Hale lived in dis- 
tracted times, and took the character of our man of let- 
ters for his model, adopting two principles in the conduct 
of the Roman. He engaged himself with no party busi- 



MEN OF LETTERS. 307 

ness, and afforded a constant relief to the unfortunate, of 
whatever party. He was thus preserved amidst the con- 
tests of the times. 

If the personal interest of the man of letters be not 
deeply involved in society, his individual prosperity, 
however, is never contrary to public happiness. Other 
professions necessarily exist by the conflict and the ca- 
lamities of the community : the politician becomes great 
by hatching an intrigue; the lawyer, in counting his 
briefs ; the physician, his sick-list. The soldier is clam- 
orous for war ; the merchant riots on high prices. But 
the man of letters only calls for peace and books, to 
unite himself with his brothers scattered over Europe ; 
and his usefulness can only be felt at those intervals, 
when, after a long interchange of destruction, men, re- 
covering their senses, discover that "knowledge is power." 
Burke, whose ample mind took in every conception of the 
literary character, has finely touched on the distinction 
between this order of contemplative men, and the other 
active classes of society. In addressing Mr. Malone, 
whose real character was that of a man of letters who 
first showed us the neglected state of our literary history, 
Burke observed — for I shall give his own words, always 
too beautiful to alter — " If you are not called to exert 
your great talents, and employ your great acquisitions in 
the transitory service of your country, which is done in 
active life, you will continue to do it that permanent serv- 
ice which it receives from the labours of those who know 
how to make the silence of closets more beneficial to the 
world than all the noise and bustle of courts, senates, and 
camps." 

A moving picture of the literary life of a man of let- 
ters who was no author, would have been lost to us, had 
not Peiresc found in Gassendi a twin spirit. So intimate 
was the biographer with the very thoughts, so closely 
united in the same pursuits, and so perpetual an observer 



308 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

of the remarkable man whom he lias immortalised, that 
when employed <m this elaborate resemblance of his 
friend, he was only painting himself with all the identi- 
fying strokes of self-love.* 

It was in the vast library of Pinelli, the founder of the 
most magnificent one in Europe, that Peireso, then a 
youth, felt the remote hope of emulating the man of let- 
ters before his eyes. His life was not without prepara- 
tion, nor without fortunate coincidences; but there was 
a grandeur of design in the execution which originated 
in the genius of the man himself. 

The curious genius of Peiresc was marked by its pre- 
cocity, as usually are strong passions in strong minds ; 
this intense curiosity was the germ of all those studies 
which seemed mature in his youth. He early resolved on 
a personal intercourse with the great literary characters 
of Europe ; and his friend has thrown over these literary 
travels that charm of detail by which we accompany 
Peiresc into the libraries of the learned ; there with the 
historian opening new sources of history, or with the 
critic correcting manuscripts, and settling points of eru- 
dition ; or by the opened cabinet of the antiquary, de- 
ciphering obscure inscriptions, and explaining medals. 
In the galleries of the curious in art, among their marbles, 
their pictures, and their prints, Peiresc has often revealed 
to the artist some secret in his own art. In the museum 
of the naturalist, or the garden of the botanist, there was 
no rarity of nature on which he had not something to 
communicate. His mind toiled with that impatience of 
knowledge, that becomes a pain only when the mind is 
not on the advance. In England Peiresc was the associate 

* " I suppose," writes Evelyn, that most agreeable enthusiast of 
literature, to a travelling friend, " that you carry the life of that in- 
comparable virtuoso always about you in your motions, not only be- 
cause it is portable, but for that it is written by the pen of the great 
Gassendus." 



PEIRESC. 309 

of Camden and Selden, and had more than one interview 
with that friend to literary men, our calumniated James 
the First. One may judge by these who were the men 
whom Peiresc sought, and by whom he himself was ever 
after sought. Such, indeed, were immortal friendships ! 
Immortal they may be justly called, from the objects in 
which they concerned themselves, and from the permanent 
results of the combined studies of such friends. 

Another peculiar greatness in this literary character 
was Peiresc's enlarged devotion to literature out of its 
purest love for itself alone. He made his own universal 
curiosity the source of knowledge to other men. Con- 
sidering the studious as forming but one great family 
wherever they were, for Peiresc the national repositories 
of knowledge in Europe formed but one collection for the 
world. This man of letters had possessed himself of 
their contents, that he might have manuscripts collated, 
unedited pieces explored, extracts supplied, and even 
draughtsmen employed in remote parts of the world, to 
furnish views and plans, and to copy antiquities for the 
student, who in some distant retirement often discovered 
that the literary treasures of the world were unfailingly 
opened to him by the secret devotion of this man of 
letters. 

Carrying on the same grandeur in his views, his uni- 
versal mind busied itself in every part of the habitable 
globe. He kept up a noble traffic with all travellers, sup- 
plying them with philosophical instruments and recent 
inventions, by which he facilitated their discoveries, and 
secured their reception even in barbarous realms. In 
return he claimed, at his own cost, for he was "born 
rather to give than to receive," says Gassendi, fresh im- 
portations of Oriental literature, curious antiquities, or 
botanic rarities ; and it was the curiosity of Peiresc 
which first embellished his own garden, and thence the 
gardens of Europe, with a rich variety of exotic flowers 



310 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

and fruits.* Whenever presented with a medal, a vase, 
or a manuscript, he never slept over the gift till he had 
discovered what the donor delighted in ; and a book, a 
picture, a plant, when money could not be offered, fed 
their mutual passion, and sustained the general cause of 
science. The correspondence of Peiresc branched out to 
the farthest bounds of Ethiopia, connected both Ameri- 
cas, and had touched the newly-discovered extremities 
of the universe, when this intrepid mind closed in a 
premature death. 

I have drawn this imperfect view of Peiresc's charac- 
ter, that men of letters may be reminded of the capacity 
they possess. In the character of Peiresc, however, there 
still remains another peculiar feature. His fortune was 
not great ; and when he sometimes endured the reproach 
of those whose sordidness was startled at his prodigality 
of mind, and the great objects which were the result, 
Peiresc replied, that " a small matter suffices for the nat- 
ural wants of a literary man, whose true wealth consists 
in the monuments of arts, the treasures of his library, 
and the brotherly affections of the ingenious." Peiresc 
was a French judge, but he supported his rank more by 
his own character than by luxury or parade. He would 
not wear silk, and no tapestry hangings ornamented his 
apartments ; but the walls were covered with the por- 
traits of his literary friends ; and in the unadorned sim- 
plicity of his study, his books, his papers, and his letters 
were scattered about him on the tables, the seats, and 
the floor. There, stealing from the world, he would 
sometimes admit to his spare supper his friend Gassendi, 
" content," says that amiable philosopher, " to have me 
for his guest." 

Peiresc, like Pinelli, never published any work. These 

* On this subject see "Curiosities of Literature," vol. ii., p. 151; and 
for some further account of Peiresc and his labours, vol. iii., p. 409, of 
the same work. — Ed. 



CULTIYATORS OF KNOWLEDGE. 311 

men of letters derived their pleasure, and perhaps their 
pride, from those vast strata of knowledge which their 
curiosity had heaped together in their mighty collections. 
They either were not endowed with that faculty of genius 
which strikes out aggregate views, or were destitute of 
the talent of composition which embellishes minute ones. 
This deficiency in the minds of such men may be attribu- 
ted to a thirst of learning, which the very means to allay 
can only inflame. From all sides they are gathering 
information ; and that knowledge seems never perfect 
to which every day brings new acquisitions. With 
these men, to compose is to hesitate; and to revise is 
to be mortified by fresh doubts and unsupplied omissions. 
Peiresc was employed all his life on a history of Prov- 
ence ; but, observes Gassendi, " He could not mature the 
birth of his literary offspring, or lick it into any shape of 
elegant form ; he was therefore content to take the mid- 
wife's part, by helping the happier labours of others." 

Such are the cultivators of knowledge, who are rarely 
authors, but who are often, however, contributing to the 
works of others; and without whose secret labours the 
public would not have possessed many valued ones. 
The delightful instruction which these men are con- 
stantly offering to authors and to artists, flows from 
their silent but uninterrupted cultivation of literature 
and the arts. 

When Robertson, after his successful "History of 
Scotland," was long irresolute in his designs, and still 
unpractised in that curious research which habitually 
occupies these men of letters, his admirers had nearly 
lost his popular productions, had not a fortunate intro- 
duction to Dr. Birch enabled him to open the clasped 
books, and to drink of the sealed fountains. Robertson 
has confessed his inadequate knowledge, and his over- 
flowing gratitude, in letters which I have elsewhere 
printed. A suggestion by a man of letters has opened 



312 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

the career of many an aspirant. A hint from "Walsh 
conveyed a new conception of English poetry to one of 
its masters. The celebrated treatise of Grotius on "Peace 
and War" was projected by Peiresc. It was said of 
Magliabechi, who knew all books, and never wrote one, 
that by his diffusive communications he was in some 
respect concerned in all the great works of his times. Sir 
Robert Cotton greatly assisted Camden and Speed; and 
that hermit of literature, Baker of Cambridge, was ever 
supplying with his invaluable researches Burnet, Kennet, 
Hearne, and Middleton. The concealed aid which men 
of letters afford authors, may be compared to those sub- 
terraneous streams, which, flowing into spacious lakes, 
are, though unobserved, enlarging the waters which 
attract the public eye. 

Count De Caylus, celebrated for his collection, and for 
his generous patronage of artists, has given the last 
touches to this picture of the man of letters, with all the 
delicacy and warmth of a self-painter. 

" His glory is confined to the mere power which he 
nas of being one day useful to letters and to the arts ; for 
his whole life is employed in collecting materials of which 
learned men and artists make no use till after the death 
of him who amassed them. It affords him a very sensi- 
ble pleasure to labour in hopes of being useful to those 
who pursue the same course of studies, while there are so 
great a number who die without discharging the debt 
which they incur to society." 

Such a man of letters appears to have been the late 
Lord Woodhouselee. Mr. Mackenzie, returning from 
his lordship's literary retirement, meeting Mr. Alison, 
finely said, that " he hoped he was going to Woodhouse- 
lee ; for no man could go there without being happier, 
or return from it without being better." 

Shall we then hesitate to assert, that this class of lit- 
erary men forms a useful, as well as a select order in 



OLD AGE. . 313 

society ? We see that their leisure is not idleness, that 
their studies are not unfruitful for the public, and that 
their opinions, purified from passions and prejudices, are 
always the soundest in the nation. They are counsellors 
whom statesmen may consult ; fathers of genius to whom 
authors and artists may look for aid, and friends of all 
nations ; for we ourselves have witnessed, during a war 
of thirty years, that the men" of letters in England were 
still united with their brothers in France. The abode of 
Sir Joseph Banks was ever open to every literary and 
scientific foreigner; while a wish expressed or a com- 
munication written by this man of letters, was even 
respected by a political power which, acknowledging no 
other rights, paid a voluntary tribute to the claims of 
science and the privileges of literature. 



CHAPTER XXII. 



Literary old age still learning. — Influence of late studies in life. — Occu- 
. pations in advanced age of the literary character. — Of literary men 
who have died at their studies. 

THE old .age of the literary character retains its enjoy- 
ments, and usually its powers — a happiness which 1 
accompanies no other. The old age of coquetry wit- 
nesses its own extinct beauty; that of the "used" idler 
is left without a sensation ; that of the grasping Croesus 
exists only to envy his heir ; and that of the Machiavel 
who has no longer a voice in the cabinet, is but an unhappy 
spirit lingering to find its grave : but for the aged man 
of letters memory returns to her stores, and imagination 
is still on the wing amidst fresh discoveries and new 
designs. The others fall like dry leaves, but he drops 
like ripe fruit, and is valued when no longer on the tree. 



314 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

The constitutional melancholy of Johnson often tinged 
his views of human life. When he asserted that "no 
man adds much to his stock of knowledge, or improves 
much after forty," his theory was overturned by his own 
experience ; for his most interesting works were the 
productions of a very late period of life, formed out of 
the fresh knowledge with which he had then furnished 
himself 

The intellectual faculties, the latest to decline, are often 
vigorous in the decrepitude of age. The curious mind is 
still striking out into new pursuits, and the mind of 
genius is still creating. Axcoija empabo ! — "Even yet I 
am learning !" was the concise inscription on an ingenious 
device of an old man placed in a child's go-cart, with an 
hour-glass upon it, which, it is said, Michael Angelo ap- 
plied to his own vast genius in his ninetieth year. Paint- 
ers have improved even to extreme old age : West's last 
works were his best, and Titian was greatest on the verge 
of his century. Poussin was delighted with the dis- 
covery of this circumstance in the lives of painters. " As 
I grow older, I feel the desire of surpassing myself." 
And it was in the last year of his life, that with the finest 
poetical invention, he painted the allegorical pictures of 
the Seasons. A man of letters in his sixtieth year once 
told me, "It is but of late years that I have learnt the 
rio-ht use of books and the art of reading." 

Time, the great destroyer of other men's happiness, 
only enlarges the patrimony of literature to its possessor. 
A learned and highly intellectual friend once said to me, 
" If I have acquired more knowledge these last four years 
than I had hitherto, I shall add materially to my stores 
in the next four years ; and so at eveiy subsequent period 
of my life, should I acquire only in the same proportion, 
the general mass of my knowledge will greatly accumu- 
late. If we are not deprived by nature or misfortune of 
the means to pursue this perpetual augmentation of 



OLD AGE. 315 

knowledge, I do not see but we may be still fully occu- 
pied and deeply interested even to the last day of our 
earthly term." Such is the delightful thought of Owen 
Feltham : " If I die to-morrow, my life will be somewhat 
the sweeter to-day for knowledge." The perfectibility 
of the human mind, the animating theory of the eloquent 
De Stael, consists in the mass of our ideas, to which every 
age will now add, by means unknown to preceding gen- 
erations. Imagination was born at once perfect, and her 
arts find a term to their progress ; but there is no boun- 
dary to knowledge nor the discovery of thought. 

How beautiful in the old age of the literary character 
was the plan which a friend of mine pursued ! His mind, 
like a mirror whose quicksilver had not decayed, reflected 
all objects to the last. Full of learned studies and ver- 
satile curiosity, he annually projected a summer-tour on 
the Continent to some remarkable spot. The local asso- 
ciations were an unfailing source of agreeable impressions 
to a mind so well prepared, and he presented his friends 
with a " Voyage Litteraire," as a new-year's gift. In 
such pursuits, where life is " rather wearing out than 
rusting out," as Bishop Cumberland expressed it, scarcely 
shall we feel those continued menaces of death which 
shake the old age of men of no intellectual pursuits, who 
are dying so many years. 

Active enjoyments in the decline of life, then, consti- 
tute the happiness of literary men. The study of the 
arts and literature spreads a sunshine over the winter of 
their days. In the solitude and the night of human life, 
they discover that unregarded kindness of nature, which 
has given flowers that only open in the evening, and only 
bloom through the night-season, decker perceived the 
influence of late studies in life ; for he tells us, that " the 
era of threescore and ten is an agreeable age for writing ; 
your mind has not lost its vigour, and envy leaves you 
in peace " 



HQ LITERARY CHARACTER. 

The opening of one of La Mothe le Vayer's Treatises 
.s striking: "I should but ill return the favours God has 
granted me in the eightieth year of my age, should I 
allow myself to give way to that shameless want of oc- 
cupation which all my life I have condemned ;" and the 
old man proceeds with his " Observations on the Compo- 
sition and Reading of Books." " If man be a bubble 
of air, it is then time that I should hasten my task ; for 
my eightieth year admonishes me to get my baggage to- 
gether ere I leave the world," wrote Varro, in opening 
his curious treatise de lie Rustica, which the sage lived 
to finish, and which, after nearly two thousand years, the 
world possesses. "My works are many, and I am old ; 
yet I still can fatigue and tire myself with writing more," 
says Petrarch in his " Epistle to Posterity." The literary 
character has been fully occupied in the eightieth and the 
ninetieth year of life. Isaac Walton still glowed while 
writing some of the most interesting biographies in his 
eighty-fifth year, and in the ninetieth enriched the poet- 
ical world with the first publication of a romantic tale by 
Chalkhill, "the friend of Spenser." Bodmer, beyond 
eighty, was occupied on Homer, and Wieland on Cicero's 
Letters.* 

But the delight of opening a new pursuit, or a new 
course of reading, imparts the vivacity and novelty of 
youth even to old age. The revolutions of modern 
chemistry kindled the curiosity of Dr. Reid to his latest 
days, and he studied by various means to prevent the 
decay of his faculties, and to remedy the deficiencies of 
one failing sense by the increased activity of another. A 
late popular author, when advanced in life, discovered, in 
a class of reading to which he had never been accustomed, 
a profuse supply of fresh furniture for his mind. This 
felicity was the delightmlness of the old age of Goethe — 

* See " Curiosities of Literature," on " The progress of old age in 
new studies." 



STUDIES W ADYAltfCED LIFE. 317 

literature, art, and science, formed his daily inquiries ; and 
this venerable genius, prompt to receive each novel im- 
pression, was a companion for the youthful, and a com- 
municator of knowledge even for the most curious. 

Even the steps of time are retraced, and we resume 
the possessions we seemed to have lost ; for in advanced 
life a return to our early studies refreshes and renovates 
the spirits : we open the poets who made us enthusiasts, 
and the philosophers who taught us to think, with a new 
source of feeling acquired by our own experience. Adam 
Smith confessed his satisfaction at this pleasure to Pro- 
fessor Dugald Stewart, while " he was reperusing, with 
the enthusiasm of a student, the tragic poets of ancient 
Greece, and Sophocles and Euripides lay open on his table." 

Dans ses veines toujours un jeune sang bouillone, 
Et Sophocle a cent ans peint encore Antigone. 

The calm philosophic Hume found that death could 
only interrupt the keen pleasure he was again receiving 
from Lucian, inspiring at the moment a humorous self- 
dialogue with Charon. " Happily," said this philosopher, 
" on retiring from the world I found my taste for reading 
return, even with greater avidity." We find Gibbon, 
after the close of his History, returning with an appetite 
as keen to " a full repast on Homer and Aristophanes, 
and involving himself in the philosophic maze of the writ- 
ings of Plato." Lord Woodhouselee found the recom- 
position of his " Lectures on History" so fascinating in 
the last period of his life, that Mr. Alison informs us, " it 
rewarded him with that peculiar delight, which has been 
often observed in the later years of literary men ; the de- 
light of returning again to the studies of their youth, and 
of feeling under the snows of age the cheerful memories 
of their spring."* 

* There is an interesting chapter on Favourite Authors in " Curi- 
osities of Literature," vol. ii., to which tho reader may be referred for 
other examples. — Ed 



318 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

Not without a sense of exultation lias the literary char- 
acter felt this peculiar happiness, in the unbroken chain 
of his habits, and his feelings, llobbes exulted that he 
had outlived his enemies, and was still the same llobbes; 
and to demonstrate the reality of this existence, published, 
in the eighty-seventh year of his age, his version of the 
Odyssey, and the following year his Iliad. Of the happy 
results of literary habits in advanced life, the Count De 
Tressan, the elegant abridger of the old French romances, 
in his " Literary Advice to his Children" has drawn a 
most pleasing picture. With a taste for study, which he 
found rather inconvenient in the moveable existence of a 
man of the world, and a military wanderer, he had, how- 
ever, contrived to reserve an hour or two every day for 
literary pursuits. The men of science, with whom he 
had chiefly associated, appear to have turned his pas- 
sion to observation and knowledge rather than towards 
imagination and feeling ; the combination formed a wreath 
for his grey hairs. When Count De Tressan retired 
from a brilliant to an affectionate circle, amidst his 
family, he pursued his literary tastes with the vivacity 
of a young author inspired by the illusion of fame. At 
the age of seventy-live, with the imagination of a poet, he 
abridged, he translated, he recomposed his old Chivalric 
Romances, and his reanimated fancy struck fire in the 
veins of the old man. Among the first designs of his re- 
tirement was a singular philosophical legacy for his chil- 
dren. It was a view of the history and progress of the 
human mind — of its principles, its errors, and its advan- 
tages, as these were reflected in himself ; in the dawnings 
of his taste, and the secret inclinations of his mind, which 
the men of genius of the age with whom he associated 
had developed. Expatiating on their memory, he calls 
on his children to witness the happiness of study, so evi- 
dent in those pleasures which were soothing and adorn- 
ing his old age. " Without knowledge, without litera- 



DEATHS OF LITERARY MEN. 319 

ture," exclaims the venerable enthusiast, "in whatever 
rank we are born, we can only resemble the vulgar." To 
the centenary Fontenelle the Count De Tressan was 
chiefly indebted for the happy life he derived from the 
cultivation of literature ; and when this man of a hundred 
years died, Tressan, himself on the borders of the grave, 
would oifer the last fruits of his mind in an eloge to his 
ancient master. It was the voice of the dying to the 
dead, a last moment of the love and sensibility of genius, 
which feeble life could not extinguish. 

The genius of Cicero, inspired by the love of literature, 
has thrown something delightful over this latest season 
of life, in his de Senectute. To have written on old age, 
in old age, is to have obtained a triumph over Time.* 

When the literary character shall discover himself to 
be like a stranger in a new world, when all that he loved 
has not life, and all that lives has no love for old age : 
when his ear has ceased to listen, and nature has locked 
up the man within himself, he may still expire amidst his 
busied thoughts. Such aged votaries, like the old bees, 
have been found dying in their honeycombs. Let them 
preserve but the flame alive on the altar, and at the last 
moments they may be found in the act of sacrifice ! The 
venerable Bede, the instructor of his generation, and the 
historian for so many successive ones, expired in the act 
of dictating. Such was the fate of Petrarch, who, not 
long before his death, had written to a friend, " I read, 
I write, I think ; such is my life, and my pleasures as 
they were in my youth." Petrarch was found lying on 
a folio in his library, from which volume he had been 
busied making extracts for the biography of his country 
men. His domestics having often observed him studying 
in that reclining posture for days together, it was long 



* "Spurinna, or the Comforts of Old Age," by the late Sir Thomas 
Bernard, was written a year or two before he died. 



320 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

before they discovered that the poet was no more. The 
fate of Leibnitz was similar : he was found dead with the 
" Argenis" of Barclay in his hand ; he had been study- 
ing the style of that political romance as a model for his 
intended history of the House of Brunswick. The liter- 
ary death of Barthelemy affords a remarkable proof of 
the force of uninterrupted habits of study. He had 
been slightly looking over the newspaper, when suddenly 
he called for a Horace, opened the volume, and found 
the passage, on which he paused for a moment; and 
then, too feeble to speak, made a sign to bring him 
Dacicr's; but his hands were already cold, the Horace 
fell — and the classical and dying man of letters sunk 
into a fainting fit, from which he never recovered. 
Such, too, was the fate — perhaps now told for the first 
time — of the great Lord Clarendon. It was in the midst 
of composition that his pen suddenly dropped from his 
hand on the paper, he took it up again, and again it 
dropped : deprived of the sense of touch — his hand with- 
out motion — the earl perceived himself struck by palsy 
— and the life of the noble exile closed amidst the 
warmth of a literary work unfinished ! 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

Universality of genius. — Limited notion of genius entertained by the 
ancients. — Opposite faculties act with diminished force. — Men of 
genius excel only in a single art. 

THE ancients addicted themselves to one species of 
composition ; the tragic poet appears not to have 
entered into the province of comedy, nor, as far as we 
know, were their historians writers of verse. Their 
artists worked on the same principle ; and from Pliny's 



UNIVERSALITY OF GENIUS. 321 

account of the ancient sculptors, we may infer that with 
them the true glory of genius consisted in carrying to 
perfection a single species of their art. They did not 
exercise themselves indifferently on all subjects, but cul- 
tivated the favourite ones which they had chosen from 
the impulse of their own imagination. The hand which 
could copy nature in a human form, with the characteris- 
tics of the age and the sex, and the occupations of life, 
refrained from attempting the colossal and ideal majesty 
of a divinity ; and when one of these sculptors, whose 
skill was pre-eminent in casting animals, had exquisitely 
wrought the glowing coursers for a triumphal car, 
he requested the aid of Praxiteles to place the 
driver in the chariot, that his work might not be dis- 
graced by a human form of inferior beauty to his 
animals. Alluding to the devotion of an ancient sculp- 
tor to his labours, Madame de Stael has finely said, 
" The history of his life was the history of his statue." 

Such was the limited conception which the ancients 
formed of genius. They confined it to particular objects 
or departments in art. But there is a tendency among 
men of genius to ascribe a universality of power to a 
master-intellect. Dry den imagined that Virgil could have 
written satire equally with Juvenal, and some have hard- 
ily defined genius as " a power to accomplish all that we 
undertake." But literary history will detect this fallacy, 
and the failures of so many eminent men are instructions 
from Nature which must not be lost on us. 

No man of genius put forth more expansive promises 
of universal power than Leibnitz. Science, imagination, 
history, criticism, fertilized the richest of human soils ; 
yet Leibnitz, with immense powers and perpetual knowl- 
edge, dissipated them in the multiplicity of his pursuits. 
"The first of philosophers," the late Professor Playfair 
observed, " has left nothing in the immense tract of his 
intellect which can be distinguished as a monument of 
21 



322 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

his geniu3." As a universalist, Voltaire remains un- 
paralleled in ancient or in modern times. This volumin- 
ous idol of our neighbours stands without a rival in liter- 
ature; but an exception, even if this were one, cannot 
overturn a fundamental principle, for we draw our con- 
clusions not from the fortune of one man of genius, but 
from the fate of many. The real claims of this great 
writer to invention and originality are as moderate as 
his size and his variety are astonishing. The wonder of 
his ninety vol imes is, that he singly consists of a number 
of men of the second order, making up one great man ; 
for unquestionably some could rival Voltaire in any 
single province, but no one but himself has possessed 
them all. Voltaire discovered a new art, that of creat- 
ing a supplement to the genius which had preceded him ; 
and without Corneille, Racine, and Ariosto, it would be 
difficult to conjecture what sort of a poet Voltaire could 
have been. He was master, too, of a secret in composi- 
tion, which consisted in a new style and manner. His 
style promotes, but never interrupts thinking, while it 
renders all subjects familiar to our comprehension : his 
manner consists in placing objects well known in new 
combinations; he ploughed up the fallow lands, and 
renovated the worn-out exhausted soils. Swift denned a 
good style, as " proper words in proper places." Vol- 
taire's impulse was of a higher flight, " proper thoughts 
on proper subjects." Swift's idea was that of a gramma- 
rian. Voltaire's feeling was that of a philosopher. We 
are only considering this universal writer in his literary 
character, which has fewer claims to the character of an. 
inventor than several who never attained to his celebrity. 
Are the original powers of genius, then, limited to a 
single art, and even to departments in that art ? May 
not men of genius plume themselves with the vainglory 
of universality ? Let us dare to call this a vainglory ; 
for he who stands the first in his class, does not really add 



SINGLENESS OF GENIUS. 323 

to the distinctive character of his genius, by a versatility 
which, however apparently successful is always subordin- 
ate to the great character on which his fame rests. It 
is only that character which bears the raciness of the 
soil ; it is only that impulse whose solitary force stamps 
the authentic work of genius. To execute equally well 
on a variety of subjects may raise a suspicion of the 
nature of the executive power. Should it be mimetic, 
the ingenious writer may remain absolutely destitute of 
every claim to genius. Du Clos has been refused the 
honours of genius by the French critics, because he 
wrote equally well on a variety of subjects. 

I know that this principle is contested by some of 
great name, who have themselves evinced a wonderful 
variety of powers. This penurious principle flatters not 
that egotism which great writers share in common with 
the heroes who have aimed at universal empire. Besides, 
this universality may answer many temporary purposes. 
These writers may, however, observe that their contem- 
poraries are continually disputing on the merits of their 
versatile productions, and the most contrary opinions are 
even formed by their admirers ; but their great individ- 
ual character standing by itself, and resembling no other, 
is a positive excellence. It is time only, who is influenced 
by no name, and will never, like contemporaries, mis- 
take the true work of genius. 

And if it be true that the primary qualities of the 
mind are s'o different in men of genius as to render them 
more apt for one class than for another, it would seem 
that whenever a pre-eminent faculty had shaped the 
mind, a faculty of the most contrary nature must act 
with a diminished force, and the other often with an 
exclusive one. An impassioned and pathetic genius has 
never become equally eminent as a comic genius. Rich- 
ardson and Fielding could not have written each other's 
works. Could Butler, who excelled in wit and satire : 



324 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

like Milton have excelled in sentiment and imagination ? 
Some eminent men have shown remarkable failures in 
their attempts to cultivate opposite departments in their 
own pursuits. The tragedies and the comedies of Dry- 
den equally prove that he was not blest with a dramatic 
genius. Cibber, a spirited comic writer, was noted for 
the most degrading failures in tragedy; while Rowe, 
successful in the softer tones of the tragic muse, proved 
as luckless a candidate for the smiles of the comic as the 
pathetic Otway. La Fontaine, unrivalled humorist as 
a fabulist, found his opera hissed, and his romance 
utterly tedious. The true genius of Sterne was of a de- 
scriptive and pathetic cast, and his humour and ribaldry 
were a perpetual violation of his natural bent. Alfieri's 
great tragic powers could not strike out into comedy or 
wit. Scarron declared he intended to write a tragedy. 
The experiment was not made ; but with his strong cast 
of mind and habitual associations, we probably have lost 
a new sort of " Roman comique." Cicero failed in poetry, 
Addison in oratory, Voltaire in comedy, and Johnson in 
tragedy. The Anacreontic poet remains only Anacreon- 
tic in his epic. With the fine arts the same occurrence 
has happened. It has been observed in painting, that 
the school eminent for design was deficient in colouring ; 
while those who with Titian's warmth could make the 
blood circulate in the flesh, could never rival the expres- 
sion and anatomy of even the middling artists of the 
Roman school. 

Even among those rare and gifted minds which have 
startled us by the versatility of their powers, whence do 
they derive the high character of their genius ? Their 
durable claims are substantiated by what is inherent in 
themselves — what is individual — and not by that flexi- 
bility which may include so much which others can equal. 
We rate them by their positive originality, not by their 
variety of powers. When we think of Young, it is only 



SINGLENESS OF GENIUS. 325 

of his " Night Thoughts," not of his tragedies, nor his 
poems, nor even of his satires, which others have rivalled 
or excelled. Of Akenside, the solitary work of genius is 
his great poem ; his numerous odes are not of a higher 
order than those of other ode-writers. Had Pope only- 
composed odes and tragedies, the great philosophical poet, 
master of human life and of perfect verse, had not left an 
undying name. Teniers, unrivalled in the walk of his 
genius, degraded history by the meanness of his concep- 
tions. Such instances abound, and demonstrate an im- 
portant truth in the history of genius that we cannot, 
however we may incline, enlarge the natural extent of 
our genius, any more than we can " add a cubit to our 
stature." We may force it into variations, but in multi- 
plying mediocrity, or in doing what others can do, we 
add nothing to genius. 

So true is it that men of genius appear only to excel in 
a single art, or even in a single department of art, that 
it is usual with men of taste to resort to a particular 
artist for a particular object. Would you ornament your 
house by interior decorations, to whom would you apply 
if you sought the perfection of art, but to different artists, 
of very distinct characters in their invention and their 
execution ? For your arabesques you would call in the 
artist whose delicacy of touch and playfulness of ideas 
are not to be expected from the grandeur of the histori- 
cal painter, or the sweetness of the Paysagiste. Is it not 
evident that men of genius excel only in one depart- 
ment of their art, and that whatever they do with the 
utmost original perfection, cannot be equally done by an- 
other man of genius? He whose undeviating genius 
guards itself in its own true sphere, has the greatest 
chance of encountering no rival. He is a Dante, a Milton, 
a Michael Angelo, a Raphael : his hand will not labour 
on what the Italians call pasticcios ; and he remains not 
unimitated but inimitable. 



326 LITERARY CHARACTER. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

Literature an avenue to glory. — An intellectual nobility not chimerical, 
but created by public opinion. — Literary honours of various na- 
tions. — Local associations with the memory of the man of genius. 

LITERATURE is an avenue to glory, ever open for 
those ingenious men who are deprived of honours or 
of wealth. Like that illustrious Roman who owed noth- 
ing to his ancestors, tridetiw ex se natus, these seem self- 
born; and in the baptism of fame, they have given them- 
selves their name. Bruyere has finely said of men of 
genius, "These men have neither ancestors nor posterity ; 
they alone compose their whole race." 

But Akenside, we have seen, blushed when his lame- 
ness reminded him of the fall of one of his father's cleav- 
ers ; Prior, the son of a vintner, could not endure to be 
reminded, though by his favourite Horace, that " the 
cask retains its flavour ;" like Voiture, another descend- 
ant of a marchandde vin, whose heart sickened over that 
which exhilarates all other hearts, whenever his opinion 
of its quality, was maliciously consulted. All these in- 
stances too evidently prove that genius is subject to the 
most vulgar infirmities. 

But some have thought more courageously. The 
amiable Rollin was the son of a cutler, but the historian 
of nations never felt his dignity compromised by his 
birth. Even late in life, he ingeniously alluded to his 
first occupation, for we find an epigram of his in sending 
a knife for a new-years's gift, " informing his friend, that 
should this present appear to come rather from Vulcan 
than from Minerva, it should not surprise, for," adds the 
epigrammatist, " it was from the cavern of the Cyclops I 
began to direct my footsteps towards Parnassus." The 
great political negotiator, Cardinal D'Ossat, was elevated 



GENIUS ELEVATES OBSCURE MEN. 327 

by his genius from an orphan state of indigence, and 
was alike destitute of ancestry, of titles, even of parents. 
On the day of his creation, when others of noble extrac- 
tion assumed new titles from the seignorial names of their 
ancient houses, he was at a loss to fix on one. Having 
asked the Pope whether he should choose that of his 
bishopric, his holiness requested him to preserve his plain 
family name, which he had rendered famous by his own 
genius. The sons of a sword-maker, a potter, and a tax- 
gatherer, were the greatest of the orators, the most ma- 
jestic of the poets, and the most graceful of the satirists 
of antiquity ; Demosthenes, Virgil, and Horace. The 
eloquent Massillon, the brilliant Flechier, Rousseau, and 
Diderot ; Johnson, Goldsmith, and Franklin, arose amidst 
the most humble avocations. 

Vespasian raised a statue to the historian Josephus, 
though a Jew ; and the Athenians one to iEsop, though 
a slave. Even among great militaiy republics the road 
to public honour was open, not alone to heroes and 
patricians, but to that solitary genius which derives from 
itself all which it gives to the public, and nothing from 
its birth or the public situation it occupies. 

It is the prerogative of genius to elevate obscure men 
to the higher class of society. If the affluence of wealth 
in the present day has created a new aristocracy of its 
own, where they already begin to be jealous of their 
ranks, we may assert that genius creates a sort of intel- 
lectual nobility, which is now conferred by public feeling ; 
as heretofore the surnames of "the African," and of 
" Coriolanus," won by valour, associated with the names 
of the conqueror of Africa and the vanquisher of Corioli. 
"Were men of genius, as such, to have armorial bearings, 
they might consist, not of imaginary things, of griffins 
and chimeras, but of deeds performed and of public 
works in existence. TThen Dondi raised the great astro- 
nomical clock at the University of Padua, which was 



32? LITERARY CHARACTER. 

long the admiration of Europe, it gave a name and 
nobility to its maker and all his descendants. There 
still lives a Marquis Dondi dal' Horologio. Sir Hugh 
Middleton, in memory of his vast enterprise, changed 
his former arms to hear three piles, to perpetuate the 
interesting circumstance, that by these instruments he 
had strengthened the works he had invented, when his 
genius poured forth the waters through our metropolis, 
thereby distinguishing it from all others in the world. 
Should not Evelyn have inserted an oak-tree in his bear- 
ings? for his "Sylva" occasioned the plantation of 
" many millions of timber-trees," and the present navy 
of Great Britain has been constructed with the oaks 
which the genius of Evelyn planted. There was an 
eminent Italian musician, who had a piece of music in- 
scribed on his tomb ; and I have heard of a Dutch mathe- 
matician, who had a calculation for his epitaph. 

"VYe who were reproached for a coldness in our national 
character, have caught the inspiration and enthusiasm 
for the works and the celebrity of genius ; the symptoms 
indeed were long dubious. Reynolds wished to have 
one of his own pictures, " Contemplation in the figure 
of an Angel," carried at his funeral ; a custom not un- 
usual with foreign painters ; but it was not deemed pru- 
dent to comply with this last wish of the great artist, 
from the fears entertained as to the manner in which a 
London populace might have received such a novelty. 
This shows that the profound feeling of art is still con- 
fined within a circle among us, of which hereafter the 
circumference perpetually enlarging, may embrace even 
the whole people. If the public have borrowed the 
names of some lords to dignify a " Sandwich " and a 
" Spencer," we may be allowed to raise into titles of lit- 
erary nobility those distinctions which the public voice 
has attached to some authors ; ^/Eschylus Potter, Athenian 
Stuart, and Anacreon Moore. Butler, in his own day, 



LITERARY HONOURS. 329 

was more generally known by the single and singular 
name of Hudibras, than by his own. 

This intellectual nobility is not chimerical. Such titles 
must be found indeed, in the years which are to come ; 
yet the prelude of their fame distinguishes these men 
from the crowd. Whenever the rightful possessor ap- 
pears, will not the eyes of all spectators be fixed on him? 
I allude to scenes which I have witnessed. Will not 
even literary honours superadd a nobility to nobility; 
and make a name instantly recognised which might 
otherwise be hidden under its rank, and remain unknown 
by its title ? Our illustrious list of literary noblemen is 
far more glorious than the satirical " Catalogue of ISToble 
Authors," drawn up by a polished and heartless cynic, 
who has pointed his brilliant shafts at all who were chival- 
rous in spirit, or related to the family of genius. One may 
presume on the existence of this intellectual nobility, 
from the extraordinary circumstance that the great have 
actually felt a jealousy of the literary rank. But no 
rivalry can exist in the solitary honour conferred on an 
author. It is not an honour derived from birth nor crea- 
tion, but from public opinion, and inseparable from his 
name, as an essential quality; for the diamond will 
sparkle and the rose will be fragrant, otherwise it is no 
diamond or rose. The great may well condescend to be 
humble to genius, siuce genius pays its homage in be- 
coming proud of that humility. Cardinal Richelieu was 
mortified at the celebrity of the unbending Corneille ; so 
were several noblemen at Pope's indifference to their 
rank ; and Magliabechi, the book prodigy of his age, 
whom every literary stranger visited at Florence, assured 
Lord Raley that the Duke of Tuscany had become jeal- 
ous of the attention he was receiving from foreigners, as 
they usually went to visit Magliabechi before the Grand 
Duke. 

A confession by Montesquieu states, with open can- 



330 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

dour, a fact in his life which confirms this jealousy of the 
great with the literary character. " On my entering into 
life I was spoken of as a man of talents, and people of 
condition gave me a favourable reception ; but when the 
success of my Persian Letters proved perhaps that I was 
not unworthy of my reputation, and the public began to 
esteem me, my reception with the great was discouraging, 
and I experienced innumerable mortifications." Montes- 
quieu subjoins a reflection sufficiently humiliating for the 
mere nobleman : " The great, inwardly wounded with 
the glory of a celebrated name, seek to humble it. In 
general he only can patiently endure the fame of others, 
who deserves fame himself." This sort of jealousy un- 
questionably prevailed in the late Lord Orford, a wit, a 
man of the world, and a man of rank ; but while he con- 
sidered literature as a mere amusement, he was mortified 
at not obtaining literary celebrity ; he felt his authorial 
always beneath his personal character. It fell to my lot 
to develope his real feelings respecting himself and the 
literary men of his age.* 

Who was the dignified character, Lord Chesterfield or 
Samuel Johnson, when the great author, proud of his 
protracted and vast labour, rejected his lordship's tardy 
and trivial patronage ? f "I value myself," says Swift, 

* "Calamities of Authors." I printed, in 1812, extracts from "Wal- 
pole's correspondence with Cole. Some have considered that there 
was a, severity of delineation in my character of Horace "Walpole. I 
was the first, in my impartial view of his literary character, to pro- 
claim to the world what it has now fully sanctioned, that " His most 
pleasing, if not his great talent, lay in letter-writing ; here h.e was 
without a rival. His correspondence abounded with literature, criti- 
cism, and wit of the most original and brilliant composition." This 
was published several years before the recent collection of his letters. 

f Johnson had originally submitted the plan of his "Dictionary" 
to Lord Chesterfield, but received no mark of interest or sympathy 
during its weary progress ; when the moment of publication approached, 
his lordship, perhaps in the hope of earning a dedication, published in 
The World two letters commending Johnson and his labours. It was 



INTELLECTUAL NOBILITY. 331 

" upon making the ministry desire to be acquainted with 
Parnell, and not Parnell with the ministry." Piron 
would not suffer the literary character to be lowered in 
his presence. Entering the apartment of a nobleman, 
who was conducting another peer to the stairs-head, the 
latter stopped to make way for Piron : " Pass on, my 
lord," said the noble master ; " pass, he is only a poet." 
Piron replied, " Since our qualities are declared, I shall 
take my rank," and placed himself before the lord. Nor 
is this pride, the true source of elevated character, re- 
fused to the great artist as well as the great author. 
Michael Angelo, invited by Julius II. to the court of 
Rome, found that intrigue had indisposed his holiness 
towards him, and more than once the great artist was 
suffered to linger in attendance in the antechamber. 
One day the indignant man of genius exclaimed, " Tell 
his holiness, if he wants me, he must look for me else- 
where." He flew back to his beloved Florence, to pro- 
ceed with that celebrated cartoon which afterwards be- 
came a favourite study with all artists. Thrice the Pope 
wrote for his return, and at length menaced the little 
State of Tuscany with war, if Michael Angelo prolonged 
his absence. He returned. The sublime artist knelt at 
the foot of the Father of the Church, turning aside his 
troubled countenance in silence. An intermeddling 
bishop offered himself as a mediator, apologising for our 
artist by observing, " Of this proud humour are these 
painters made !" Julius turned to this pitiable mediator, 
and, as Vasari tells, used a switch on this occasion, ob- 



this notice that produced Johnson's celebrated letter, in which he 
asks, — " Is not a patron, my lord, one who looks with unconcern on a 
man struggling for life in the water, and when he has reached ground 
encumbers him with help ? The notice you have been pleased to take 
of my labours, had it been early had been kind, but it has been de- 
layed till I am indifferent and cannot enjoy it ; till I am solitary, and 
cannot impart it ; till I am known, and do not want it." — Ed. 



332 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

serving, "You speak injuriously of him, while I am 
silent. It is you who are ignorant." Raising Michael 
Angelo, Julius II. embraced the man of genius. 

"I can make lords of you every day, but I cannot 
create a Titian," said the Emperor Charles V. to his court- 
iers, who had become jealous of the hours and the half- 
hours which the monarch stole from them that he might 
converse with the man of genius at his work. There is 
an elevated intercourse between p k ower and genius ; and 
if they are deficient in reciprocal esteem, neither are 
great. The intellectual nobility seems to have been as- 
serted by De Harlay, a great French statesman ; for 
when the Academy was once not received with royal 
honours, he complained to the French monarch, observ- 
ing, that when " a man of letters was presented to 
Francis I. for the first time, the king always advanced 
three steps from the throne to receive him." It is some- 
thing more than an ingenious thought, when Fontenelle, 
in his eloge on Leibnitz, alluding to the death of Queen 
Anne, adds of her successor, that " The Elector of Han- 
over united under his dominion an electorate, the three 
kingdoms of Great Britain, and Leibnitz and Newton."* 

If ever the voice of individuals can recompense a life 
of literary labour, it is in speaking a foreign accent. 
This sounds like the distant plaudit of posterity. The 
distance of space between the literary character and the 
inquirer, in some respects represents the distance of time 
which separates the author from the next age. Fon- 
tenelle was never more gratified than when a Swede, ar- 
riving at the gates of Paris, inquired of the custom-house 

* This greatness of intellect that glorifies a court, however small, is 
well instanced in that at "Weimar, where the Duke Frederic surrounded 
himself with the first men in Germany. It was the chosen residence and 
burial-place of Herder ; the birth-place of Kotzebue. Here also Wieland 
resided for many years ; and in the vaults of the ducal chapel the ashos 
of Schiller repose by those of Goethe, who for more than half a century 
assisted in the councils, and adorned the court of Weimar. — Ed. 



HONOUR TO QENIUS. 333 

officers where Fontenelle resided, and expressed his in- 
dignation that not one of them had ever heard of his 
name. Hobbes expresses his proud delight that his por- 
trait 'was sought after by foreigners, and that the Great 
Duke of Tuscany made the philosopher the object of his 
first inquiries. Camden was not insensible to the visits 
of German noblemen, who were desirous of seeing the 
British Pliny; and Pocock, while he received no aid 
from patronage at home for his Oriental studies, never 
relaxed in those unrequited labours, animated by the 
learned foreigners, who hastened to see and converse with 
this prodigy of Eastern learning. 

Yes ! to the very presence of the man of genius will 
the world spontaneously pay their tribute of respect, of 
admiration, or of love. Many a pilgrimage has he lived 
to receive, and many a crowd has followed his footsteps ! 
There are days in the life of genius which repay its suffer- 
ings. Demosthenes confessed he was pleased when even 
a fishwoman of Athens pointed him out. Corneille had 
his particular seat in the theatre, and the audience would 
rise to salute him when he entered. At the presence of 
Baynal in the House of Commons, the Speaker was re- 
quested to suspend the debate till that illustrious for- 
eigner, who had written on the English parliament, was 
accommodated with a seat. Spinosa, when he gained an 
humble livelihood by grinding optical glasses, at an ob- 
scure village in Holland, was visited by the first general 
in Europe, who, for the sake of this philosophical con- 
ference, suspended the march of the army. 

In all ages and in all countries has this feeling been 
created. It is neither a temporary ebullition nor an in- 
dividual honour. It comes out of the heart of man. It 
is the passion of great souls. In Spain, whatever was 
most beautiful in its kind was described by the name of 
the great Spanish bard :* everything excellent was called 

* Lope de Tega. 



334 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

a Lcpe. Italy would furnish a volume of the public 
honours decreed to literary men ; nor is that spirit ex- 
tinct, though the national character has fallen by the 
chance of fortune. Metastasio and Tiraboschi received 
what had been accorded to Petrarch and to Poggio. 
Germany, patriotic to its literary characters, is the land 
of the enthusiasm of genius. On the borders of the Lin- 
net, in the public walk of Zurich, the monument of Ges- 
ner, erected by the votes of his fellow-citizens, attests 
their sensibility ; and a solemn funeral honoured the re- 
mains of Klopstock, led by the senate of Hamburgh, 
with fifty thousand votaries, so penetrated by one uni- 
versal sentiment, that this multitude preserved a mourn- 
ful silence, and the interference of the police ceased to be 
necessary through the city at the solemn burial of the 
man of genius. lias even Holland proved insensible ? 
The statue of Erasmus, in Rotterdam, still animates her 
young students, and offers a noble example to her neigh- 
bours of the influence even of the sight of the statue of 
a man of genius. Travellers never fail to mention Eras- 
mus when Basle occupies their recollections; so that, as 
Bayle observes, "He has rendered the place of his 
death as celebrated as that of his birth." In France, 
since Francis I. created genius, and Louis XIV. protected 
it, the impulse has been communicated to the French peo- 
ple. There the statues of their illustrious men spread 
inspiration on the spots which living they would have 
haunted :— in their theatres, the great dramatists ; in their 
Institute their illustrious authors \ in their public edifices, 
congenial men of genius.* This is worthy of the coun- 

* We cannot bury the fame of our English worthies — that exists be- 
fore us, independent of ourselves ; but we bury the influence of their in- 
spiring presence in those immortal memorials of genius easy to be read 
by all men — their statues and their busts, consigning them to spots 
seldom visited, and often too obscure to be viewed. [We have recent 
evidence of a more noble acknowledgment of our great men. The 



HONOURS TO GENIUS. 335 

try which privileged the family of La Fontaine to be for 
ever exempt from taxes, and decreed that " the produc- 
tions of the mind were not seizable," when the creditors 
of Crebillon would have attached the produce of his 
tragedies. 

These distinctive honours accorded to genius were in 
unison with their decree respecting the will of Bayle. It 
was the subject of a lawsuit between the heir of the will 
and the inheritor by blood. The latter contested that 
this great literary character, being a fugitive for religion, 
and dying in a proscribed country, was divested by law 
of the power to dispose of his property, and that our au- 
thor, when resident in Holland, in a civil sense was dead. 
In the Parliament of Toulouse the judge decided that 
learned men are free in all countries : that he who had 
sought in a foreign land an asylum from his love of let- 
ters, was no fugitive ; that it was unworthy of France to 
treat as a stranger a son in whom she gloried, and he 
protested against the notion of a civil death to such a 
man as Bayle, whose name was living throughout Europe. 
This judicial decision in France was in unison with that 
of the senate of Rotterdam, who declared of the emigrant 
Bayle, that " such a man should not be considered as a 
foreigner." 

Even the most common objects are consecrated when 
associated with the memory of the man of genius. We 
still seek for his tomb on the spot where it has vanished. 
The enthusiasts of genius still wander on the hills of Pau- 
silippo, and muse on Virgil to retrace his landscape. There 
is a grove at Magdalen College which retains the name of 
Addison's walk, where still the student will linger ; and 
there is a cave at Macao, which is still visited by the 
Portuguese from a national feeling, for Camoen§ there 

statue of Dr. Jenner is placed in Trafalgar Square ; and Grantham 
has now a noble work to commemorate its great townsman, Sir Isaac 
Newton.] 



336 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

i 

passed many days in composing his Lnsiad. When 

trarch was passing by bis native town, he was received 
with the honours of his fame; bnt when the heads of the 
town conducted Petrarch to the house where the poet 

was horn, and informed him that the proprietor had often 
wished to make alterations, bnt that the townspeople had 
risen to insist that the honse which was consecrated by 
the birth of Petrarch should be preserved unchanged; 
this was a triumph more affecting to Petrarch than his 
coronation at Rome* 

In the village of Certaido is still shown the hoi, 
Boccaccio; and on a turret are seen the arms of the Me- 
dici, which they hail sculptured there, with an inscription 
alluding to a small house and a name which filled the 
world; and in Ferrara, the small house which Ariosto 
built was purchased, to be preserved, by the municipality, 
and there they still show the poet's Btudy ; and under his 
bust a simple but affecting tribute to genius records that 
" Ludovico Ariosto in this apartment wrote." Two hun- 
dred and eighty years after the death of the divine poet 
it was purchased by the 2X>desta, with the money of the 
commune, that "the public veneration may be main- 
tained." f " Foreigners," says Anthony Wood of Milton, 
" have, out of pure devotion, gone to Bread-street to see 
the house and chamber wdiere he was born ;" and at Paris 

* On this passage I find a remarkable manuscript note by Lord 
Byron : — " It would have pained me more that ' the proprietor ' should 
have 'often wished to make alterations, than it could give pleasure 
that the rest of Arezzo rose against his right (for rigid he had) ; the 
depreciation of the lowest of mankind is more painful than the applause 
of the highest is pleasing ; the sting of a scorpion is more in torture 
than the possession of anything could be in rapture." 

f A public subscription secured the house in which Shakspeare was 
born at Stratford-on-Avon. Durer's house, at Nuremberg, is still re- 
ligiously preserved, and its features are unaltered. The house in 
which Michael Augelo resided at Florence is also carefully guarded, 
and the rooms are still in the condition in which they were left by the 
great master. — Ed. 



the house which Voltaire inhabited, and at Ferney his 
study, are both preserved inviolate. In the study of 
Montesquieu at La Brede, near Bordeaux, the propr: 
has preserved all the furniture, without altering anything, 
that the apartment where this great man meditated on 
his immortal work should want for not hi ng to assist the 
reveries of the spectator; and on the side of the chimney 
ill seen a place which while writing he was accus- 
tomed to rub his feet against, as they rested on it. In a 
keep or dungeon of this feudal . the local associa- 

tion suggested to the philosopher his chapter on " The 
Liberty of the Citizen." It is the second chapter of the 
twelfth book, of which the close is remarkable. 

Let as regret that the little villa of Pope, and the 
t. !r7i: Ir:- ; :~r ; :: Sirzs::i.r. _i:.-r fillrr. ~~-r "rlz-rizi: :: 
property as much as if destroyed by the barbarous hand 
which cut down the consecrated tree of Shakspeare. The 
apartment of a ma n of genius, the chair he studied 
in, the table he wrote on, are contemplated with curios:: 7 : 
the spot is full of local impressions. And all this hap- 
pens from an unsatisfied desire to see and hear hfm whom 
we never can see nor hear ; yet, in a moment of illusion, 
if we listen to a traditional conversation, if we can revive 
one of his feelings, if we can catch but a dim image, we 
reproduce this man of genius before us. on whose features 
we so often dwelL Even the rage of the military spirit 
has taught itself to respect the abode of genius ; and 
Caesar and SyHa, who never spared the blood of their own 
Rome, alike felt their spirit rebuked, and alike saved the 
literary city of Athens. Antiquity has preserved a beau- 
tiful incident of this nature, in the noble reply of the art- 
ist Protogenes. "When the city of Rhc 1 a _ ; :aken by 
Demetrius, the man of genius was discovered inhk gs - 
den, tranquilly finishing a picture. "How ia if thai you 
do not participate in the general alaim?" asked the con- 
queror. " Demetrius, you war against the Rhodians, but 



338 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

not against the fine arts," replied the man of genius. De- 
metrius had already shown this by his conduct, for he 
forbade firing that part of the city where the artist re- 
sided. 

The house of the man of genius has been spared amidst 
contending empires, from the days of Pindar to those of 
Buffon; "the Historian of Nature's" chateau was pre- 
served from this elevated feeling by Prince Sehwartzen- 
berg, as our Marlborough had performed the same glori- 
ous office in guarding the hallowed asylum of Fenelon. * 
In the grandeur of Milton's verse we perceive the feeling 
he associated with this literary honour : 

The great Emathian conqueror bid spare 

The house of Pindarus when temple and tower 

"Went to the ground . 

And the meanest things, the very household stuff, asso- 
ciated with the memory of the man of genius, become the 
objects of our affections. At a festival, in honour of 
Thomson, the poet, the chair in which he composed part 
of his " Seasons " was produced, and appears to have com- 
municated some of the raptures to which he was liable 
who had sat in that chair. Rabelais, amongst his drollest 
inventions, could not have imagined that his old cloak 
would have been preserved in the university of Montpe- 
lier for future doctors to wear on the day they took their 
degree ; nor could Shakspeare have supposed, with all his 
fancy, that the mulberry-tree which he planted would 
have been multiplied into relics. But in such instances 
the feeling is right, with a wrong direction ; and while 
the populace are exhausting their emotions on an old tree, 
an old chair, and an old cloak, they are paying that in- 

* The printing office of Plantyn, at Antwerp, was guarded in a 
similar manner, during the great revolution that separated Holland and 
Belgium, when a troop of soldiers were stationed in its courtyard. See 
^'Curiosities of Literature," vol. i., p. 77, note— Ed. 



ENGLAND HONOURED BY ITS AUTHORS. 339 

voluntary tribute to genius which forms its pride, and 
will generate the race. 



CHAPTER XXV. 



Influence of Authors on society, and of society on Authors. — National 
tastes a source of literary prejudices. — True Genius always the organ 
of its nation. — Master-writers preserve the distinct national charac- 
ter. — Genius' the organ of the state of the age. — Causes of its sup- 
pression in a people. — Often invented, but neglected. — The natural 
gradations of genius. — Men of Genius produce their usefulness in 
privacy. — The public mind is now the creation of the public writer. — 
Politicians affect to deny this principle. — Authors stand between the 
governors and the governed. — A view of the solitary Author in his 
study. — They create an epoch in history. — Influence of popular Au- 
thors. — The immortality of thought. — The Family of Genius illus- 
trated by their genealogy. 

LITERARY fame, which is the sole preserver of all 
other fame, participates little, and remotely, in the 
remuneration and the honours of professional characters. 
All other professions press more immediately on the 
wants and attentions of men, than the occupations of Lrr- 
eraet Chakacteks, who from their habits' are secluded ; 
producing their usefulness often at a late period of life, 
and not always valued by their own generation. 

It is not the commercial character of a nation which 
inspires veneration in mankind, nor will its military 
power engage the affections of its neighbours. So late 
as in 1700 the Italian Gemelli told all Europe that he 
could find nothing among us but our writings to distin- 
guish us from a people of barbarians. It was long 
considered that our genius partook of the density and 
variableness of our climate, and that we were incapaci- 
tated even by situation from the enjoyments of those 
beautiful arts which have not yet travelled to us — as if 



340 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

Nature herself had designed to disjoin us from mora 
polished nations and brighter skies. 

At length we have triumphed ! Our philosophers, our 
poets, and our historians, arc printed at foreign prei 
This is a perpetual victory, and establishes the ascendancy 
of our genius, as much at least as the commerce and the 
prowess of England. This singular revolution in the 
history of the human mind, and by its reaction this 
singular revolution in human affairs, was effected by a 
glorious succession of authors, who have enabled our 
nation to arbitrate among the nations of Europe, and to 
possess ourselves of their involuntary esteem by dis- 
coveries in science, by principles in philosophy, by truths 
in history, and even by the graces of fiction ; and there 
is not a man of genius among foreigners who stands 
unconnected with our intellectual sovereignty. Even 
had our country displayed more limited resources than 
its awful powers have opened, and had the sphere of its 
dominion been enclosed by its island boundaries, if the 
same national literary character had predominated, we 
should have stood on the same eminence among our 
Continental rivals. The small cities of Athens and of 
Florence will perpetually attest the influence of the 
literary character over other nations. The one received 
the tribute of the mistress of the universe, when the 
Romans sent their youth to be educated at the Grecian 
city, while the other, at the revival of letters, beheld 
every polished European crowding to its little court. 

In closing this imperfect work by attempting to 
ascertain the real influence of authors on society, it will 
be necessary to notice some curious facts in the history 
of genius. 

The distinct literary tastes of different nations, and the 
repugnance they mutually betray for the master-writers 
of each other, is an important circumstance to the 
philosophical observer. These national tastes originate 



NATIONAL AUTHORS. 341 

in modes of feeling, in customs, in idioms, and all the 
numerous associations prevalent among every people. 
The reciprocal influence of manners on taste, and of 
taste on manners — of government and religion on the 
literature of a people, and of their literature on the 
national character, with other congenial objects of 
inquiry, still require a more ample investigation. 
Whoever attempts to reduce this diversity, and these 
strong contrasts of national tastes to one common stand- 
ard, by forcing such dissimilar objects into comparative 
parallels, or by trying them by conventional principles 
and arbitrary regulations, will often condemn what in 
truth his mind is inadequate to comprehend, and the 
experience of his associations to combine. 

These attempts have been the fertile source in 
literature of what may be called national prejudices. 
The French nation insists that the northerns are defective 
in taste — the taste, they tell us, which is established at 
Paris, and which existed at Athens : the Gothic imagina- 
tion of the north spurns at the timid copiers of the 
Latin classics, and interminable disputes prevail in their 
literature, as in their architecture and their painting. 
Philosophy discovers a fact of which taste seems little 
conscious; it is, that genius varies with the soil, and 
produces a nationality of taste. The feelings of mankind 
indeed have the same common source, but they must 
come to us through the medium and by the modifica- 
tions of society. Love is a universal passion, but the 
poetry of love in different nations is peculiar to each ; 
for every great poet belongs to his country. Petrarch, 
Lope de Vega, Racine, Shakspeare, and Sadi, would each 
express this universal passion by the most specific 
differences ; and the style that would be condemned as 
unnatural by one people, might be habitual with another. 
The co?icetti of the Italian, the figurative style of the 
Persian, the swelling grandeur of the Spaniard, the 



342 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

classical correctness of the French, are all modifications 
of genius, relatively true to each particular writer. On 
national tastes critics are but wrestlers: the Spaniard 
will still prefer his Lope de Vega to the French Racine, 
or the English his Shakspeare, as the Italian his Tasso 
and his Petrarch. Hence all national writers are 
studied with enthusiasm by their own people, and their 
very peculiarities, offensive to others, with the natives 
constitute their excellences. Nor does this perpetual 
contest about the great writers of other nations solely 
arise from an association of patriotic glory, but really 
because these great native writers have most strongly 
excited the sympathies and conformed to the habitual 
tastes of their own people. 

Hence, then, we deduce that true genius is the organ 
of its nation. The creative faculty is itself created ; for 
it is the nation which first imparts an impulse to the 
character of genius. Such is the real source of those 
distinct tastes which we perceive in all great national 
authors. Every literary work, to ensure its success, 
must adapt itself to the sympathies and the understand- 
ings of the people it addresses. Hence those opposite 
characteristics, which are usually ascribed to the master- 
writers themselves, originate with the country, and not 
with the writer. Lope de Vega, and Calderon, in their 
dramas, and Cervantes, who has left his name as the 
epithet of a peculiar grave humour, were Spaniards 
before they were men of genius. Corneille, Racine, and 
Rabelais, are entirely of an opposite character to the 
Spaniards, having adapted their genius to their own 
declamatory and vivacious countrymen. Petrarch and 
Tasso display a fancifulness in depicting the passions, as 
Boccaccio narrates his facetious stories, quite distinct 
from the inventions and style of northern writers. 
Shakspeare is placed at a wider interval from all of them 
than they are from each other, and is as perfectly insular 



NATIONAL AUTHORS. 343 

in his genius as his own countrymen were in their cus- 
toms, and their modes of thinking and feeling. 

Thus the master-writers of every people preserve the 
distinct national character in their works ; and hence 
that extraordinary enthusiasm with which every people 
read their own favourite authors ; but in which others 
cannot participate, and for which, with all their national 
prejudices, they often recriminate on each other with 
false and even ludicrous criticism. 

But genius is not only the organ of its nation, it is 
also that of the state of the times; and a great work 
usually originates in the age. Certain events must pre- 
cede the man of genius, who often becomes only the 
vehicle of public feeling. Machiavel has been reproached 
for propagating a political system subversive of all 
human honour and happiness ; but was it Machiavel who 
formed his age, or the age which created Machiavel ? 
Living among the petty principalities of Italy, where 
stratagem and assassination were the practices of those 
wretched courts, what did that calumniated genius more 
than lift the veil from a cabinet of banditti ? Machiavel 
alarmed the world by exposing a system subversive of all 
human virtue and happiness, and, whether he meant it or 
not, certainly led the way to political freedom. On the 
same principle we may learn that Boccaccio would not 
have written so many indecent tales had not the scandal- 
ous lives of the monks engaged public attention. This 
we may now regret ; but the court of Rome felt the con- 
cealed satire, and that luxurious and numerous class in 
society never recovered from the chastisement. 

Montaigne has been censured for his universal scepti- 
cism, and for the unsettled notions he drew out on his 
motley page, which has been attributed to his incapacity 
of forming decisive opinions. " Que scais-je ?" was his 
motto. The same accusation may reach the gentle Eras- 
mus, who alike offended the old catholics and the new 



344: LITERARY CHARACTER. 

reformers. The real source of their vacillations we may 
discover in the age itself. It was one of controversy and 
of civil wars, when the minds of men were thrown into 
perpetual agitation, and opinions, like the victories of the 
parties, were every day changing Bides. 

Even in its advancement beyond the intelligence of its 
own age genius is but progressive. In nature all is con- 
tinuous ; she makes no starts and leaps. Genius is said 
to soar, but we should rather say that genius climbs. 
Did the great Verulam, or Rawleigh, or Dr. More, eman- 
cipate themselves from all the dreams of their age, from 
the occult agency of witchcraft, the astral influence, and 
the ghost and demon creed ? 

Before a particular man of genius can appear, certain 
events must arise to prepare the age for him. A great 
commercial nation, in the maturity of time, opened all 
the sources of wealth to the contemplation of Adam 
Smith. That extensive system of what is called political 
economy could not have been produced at any other 
time ; for before this period the materials of this work 
had but an imperfect existence, and the advances which 
this sort of science had made were only partial and pre- 
paratory. If the principle of Adam Smith's great work 
seems to confound the happiness of a nation with its 
wealth, we can scarcely reproach the man of genius, who 
we shall find is always reflecting back the feelings of his 
own nation, even in his most original speculations. 

In works of pure imagination we trace the same march 
of the human intellect ; and we discover in those inven- 
tions, which appear sealed by their originality, how much 
has been derived from the age and the people in which 
they were produced. Every work of genius is tinctured 
by the feelings, and often originates in the events, of the 
times. The Inferno of Dante was caught from the 
popular superstitions of the age, and had been preceded 
by the gross visions which the monks had forged, usually 



NATIONAL AUTHORS. 345 

for their own purposes. " La Citta dolente," and " la 
perduta gente," were familar to the imaginations of the 
people, by the monkish visions, and it seems even by 
ocular illusions of Hell, exhibited in Mysteries, with its 
gulfs of flame, and its mountains of ice, and the shrieks 
of the condemned.* To produce the " Inferno " only 
required the giant step of genius, in the sombre, the 
awful, and the fierce, Dante. When the age of chivalry 
flourished, all breathed of love and courtesy ; the great 
man was the great .lover, and the great author the ro- 
mancer. It was from his own age that Milton derived 
his greatest blemish — the introduction of school-divinity 
into poetry. In a polemical age the poet, as well as the 
sovereign, reflected the reigning tastes. 

There are accidents to which genius is liable, and by 
which it is frequently suppressed in a people. The 
establishment of the Inquisition in Spain at one stroke 
annihilated all the genius of the country. Cervantes 
said that the Inquisition had spoilt many of his most 
delightful inventions ; and unquestionably it silenced the 
wit and invention of a nation whose proverbs attest they 
possessed them even to luxuriance. All the continental 
nations have boasted great native painters and architects, 
while these arts were long truly foreign to us. Theoret- 
ical critics, at a loss to account for this singularity, 
accused not only our climate, but even our diet, as the 
occult causes of our unfitness to cultivate them.. Yet 
Montesquieu and Winkelmann might have observed that 
the air of fens and marshes had not deprived the gross 
feeders of Holland and Flanders of admirable artists. 
We have been outrageously calumniated. So far from 

* Sismondi relates that the bed of the river Arno, at Florence, was 
transformed into a representation of the G-ulf of Hell, in the year 
1304; and that all the variety of suffering that monkish imagination 
had invented was apparently inflicted on real persons, whose shrieks 
and groans gave fearful reality to the appalling scene. — Ed. 



346 



LITERARY CHARACTER. 



any national incapacity, or obtuse feelings, attaching to 
ourselves in respect to these arts, the noblest efforts had 
long been made, not only by individuals, but by the 
magnificence of Henry VIII., who invited to his court 
Raphael and Titian ; but unfortunately only obtained 
Holbein. A later sovereign, Charles the First, not only 
possessed galleries of pictures, and was the greatest pur- 
chaser in Europe, for he raised their value, but he like- 
wise possessed the taste and the science of the connois- 
seur. Something, indeed, had occurred to our national 
genius, which had thrown it into a Btupifying state, from 
which it is yet hardly aroused. Could those foreign 
philosophers have ascended to moral causes, instead of 
vapouring forth fanciful notions, they might have struck 
at the true cause of the deficiency in our national genius. 
The jealousy of puritanic fanaticism had persecuted these 
arts from the first rise of the Reformation in this country. 
It had not only banished them from our churches and 
altar-pieces, but the fury of the people, and the "wisdom" 
of parliament, had alike combined to mutilate and even 
efiace what little remained of painting and sculpture 
among us. Even within our own times this deadly 
hostility to art was not extinct ; for when a proposal was 
made gratuitously to decorate our places of worship by 
a series of religious pictures, and English artists, in pure 
devotion to Art, zealous to confute the Continental 
calumniators, asked only for walls to cover, George the 
Third highly approved of the plan. The design was put 
aside, as some had a notion that the cultivation of the 
fine arts in our naked churches was a return to Catholi- 
cism. Had this glorious plan been realized, the golden 
age of English art might have arisen. Every artist 
would have invented a subject most congenial to his 
powers. Reynolds would have emulated Raphael in the 
Virgin and Child in the manger, West had fixed on 
Christ raising the young man from the dead, Barry had 



ENGLISH ARCHITECTS. 347 

profoundly meditated on the Jews rejecting Jesus. Thus 
did an age of genius perish before its birth ! It was on 
the occasion of this frustrated project that Barry, in 
the rage of disappointment, immortalised himself by a 
gratuitous labour of seven years on the walls of the 
Society of Arts, for which, it is said, the French govern- 
ment under Buonaparte offered ten thousand pounds. 

Thus also it has happened, that we have possessed 
among ourselves great architects, although opportunities 
for displaying their genius have been rare. This the 
fate and fortune of two Englishmen attest. Without 
the fire of London we might not have shown the world 
one of the greatest architects, in Sir Christopher Wren ; 
had not a St. Paul's been required by the nation he 
would have found no opportunity of displaying the 
magnificence of his genius, which even then was muti- 
lated, as the original model bears witness to the world. 
That great occasion served this noble architect to mul- 
tiply his powers in other public edifices : and it is here 
worth remarking that, had not Charles II. been seized 
by apoplexy, the royal residence, which was begun at 
Winchester on a plan of Sir Christopher Wren's, by its 
magnificence would have raised a Versailles for Eng- 
land. 

The fate of Inigo Jones is as remarkable as that of 
Wren. Whitehall afforded a proof to foreigners that 
among a people which, before that edifice appeared, was 
reproached for their total deficiency of feeling for the 
pure classical style of architecture, the true taste could 
nevertheless exist. This celebrated piece of architecture, 
however, is but a fragment of a grander composition, by 
which, had not the civil wars intervened, the fame of 
Britain would have balanced the glory of Greece, or 
Italy, or France, and would have shown that our 
country is more deficient in marble than in genius. Thus 
the fire of London produces a St. Paul's, and the civil 



343 



LITERARY CHARACTER. 



wars suppress a Whitehall. Such circumstances in the 
history of art among nations have not always been de- 
veloped by those theorists who have calumniated the 
artists of England. 

In the history of genius it is remarkable that its work 
is often invented, and lies neglected. A close observer 
of this age pointed out to me that the military genius of 
that great French captain, who so long appeared to have 
conquered Europe, was derived from his applying the 
new principles of war discovered by Folard and Guibert. 
The genius of Folard observed that, among the changes 
of military discipline in the practice of war among Euro- 
pean nations since the introduction of gunpowder, one 
of the ancient methods of the Romans had been im- 
properly neglected, and, in his Commentaries on Poly- 
bius, Folard revived this forgotten mode of warfare. 
Guibert, in his great work, " Histoire de la Milice Fran- 
chise," or rather the History of the Art of War, adopted 
Folard's system of charging by columns, and breaking 
the centre of the enemy, which seems to be the famous 
plan of our Rodney and Nelson in their maritime battles. 
But this favourite plan became the ridicule of the mili- 
tary ; and the boldness of his pen, with the high confi- 
dence of the author, only excited adversaries to mortify 
his pretensions, and to treat him as a dreamer. From 
this perpetual opposition to his plans, and the »£g!e«^ he 
incurred, Guibert died of " vexation of ppint ;" and the 
last words on the death-bed of this r^an of genius were, 
" One day they will know me !" Folard and Guibert 
created a Buonaparte, who studied them on the field of 
battle ; and he who woulrl trace the military genius who 
so long held in suspense the fate of the world, may dis- 
cover all that he performed in the neglected inventions of 
preceding genius. 

Hence also may we deduce the natural gradations of 
genius. Many men of genius must arise before a particu- 



INFLUENCE OF AUTHORS. 349 

lar man of genius can appear. Before Homer there 
were other epic poets ; a catalogue of their names and 
their works has come down to us. Corneille could not 
have been the chief dramatist of France had not the 
founders of the French drama preceded him, and Pope 
could not have preceded Dryden. It was in the nature 
of things that a Giotto and a Cimabue should have pre- 
ceded a Raphael and a Michael Angelo. 

Even the writings of such extravagant geniuses as 
Bruno and Cardan gave indications of the progress of 
the human mind; and had Ramus not shaken the au- 
thority of the Organon of Aristotle we might not have 
had the Novum Organon of Bacon. Men slide into their 
degree in the scale of genius often by the exercise of a 
single quality which their predecessors did not possess, 
or by completing what at first was left imperfect. Truth 
is a single point in knowledge, as beauty is in art : ages 
revolve till a Newton and a Locke accomplish what an 
Aristotle and a Descartes began. The old theory of 
animal spirits, observes Professor Dugald Stewart, was 
applied by Descartes to explain the mental phenomena 
which led Newton into that train of thinking, which 
served as the groundwork of Hartley's theory of vibra- 
tions. The learning of one man makes others learned, 
and the influence of genius is in nothing more remark- 
able than in its effects on its brothers. Selden's treatise 
on the Syrian and Arabian Deities enabled Milton to 
comprise, in one hundred and thirty beautiful lines, the 
two large and learned syntagma which Selden had com- 
posed on that abstract subject. Leland, the father of 
British antiquities, impelled Stowe to work on his " Survey 
of London ;" and Stowe's " London " inspired Camden's 
stupendous " Britannia." Herodotus produced Thucydi- 
des, and Thucydides Xenophon. With us Hume, Robert- 
son, and Gibbon rose almost simultaneously by mutual in- 
spiration. There exists a perpetual action and reaction in 



350 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

the history of the human mind. It has frequently been 
inquired why certain periods seem to have been more 
favourable to a particular class of genius than another; 
or, in other words, why men of genius appear in clus- 
ters. We have theories respecting barren periods, which 
are only satisfactorily accounted for by moral causes. 
Genius generates enthusiasm and rivalry; but, having 
reached the meridian of its class, we find that there can 
be no progress in the limited perfection of human nature. 
All excellence in art, if it cannot advance, must decline. 

Important discoveries are often obtained by accident ; 
but the single work of a man of genius, which has at 
length changed the character of a people, and even of an 
age, is slowly matured in meditation. Even the me- 
chanical inventions of genius must first become perfect in 
its own solitary abode ere the world can possess them. 
Men of genius then produce their usefulness in privacy; 
but it may not be of immediate application, and is often 
undervalued by their own generation. 

The influence of authors is so great, while the author 
himself is so inconsiderable, that to some the cause may 
not appear commensurate to its effect. When Epicurus 
published his doctrines, men immediately began to ex- 
press themselves with freedom on the established religion, 
and the dark and fearful superstitions of paganism, falling 
into neglect, mouldered away. If, then, before the art of 
multiplying the productions of the human mind existed, 
the doctrines of a philosopher in manuscript or by lecture 
could diffuse themselves throughout a literary nation, it 
will baffle the algebraist of metaphysics to calculate the 
unknown quantities of the propagation of human thought. 
There are problems in metaphysics, as well as in mathe- 
matics, which can never be resolved. 

A small portion of mankind appears marked out by 
nature and by study for the purpose of cultivating their 
thoughts in peace, and of giving activity to their discov- 



INFLUENCE OF AUTHORS. 351 

eries, by disclosing them to the people. " Could I," ex- 
claims Montesquieu, whose heart was beating with the 
feelings of a great author, " could I but afford new rea- 
sons to men to love their duties, their king, their country, 
their laws, that they might become more sensible of their 
happiness under every government they live, and in every 
station they occupy, I should deem myself the happiest of 
men !" Such was the pure aspiration of the great author 
who studied to preserve, by ameliorating, the humane 
fabric of society. The same largeness of mind character- 
ises all the eloquent friends of the human race. In an age 
of religious intolerance it inspired the President De Thou 
to inculcate, from sad experience and a juster view of hu- 
man nature, the impolicy as well as the inhumanity of re- 
ligious persecutions, in that dedication to Henry IV., which 
Lord Mansfield declared he could never read without 
rapture. " I was not born for myself alone, but for my 
country and my friends 1" exclaimed the genius which 
hallowed the virtuous pages of his immortal history. 

Even our liberal yet dispassionate Locke restrained the 
freedom of his inquiries, and corrected the errors which 
the highest intellect may fall into, by marking out that 
impassable boundary which must probably for ever 
limit all human intelligence ; for the maxim which Locke 
constantly inculcates is that " Reason must be the last 
judge and guide in everything." A final answer to those 
who propagate their opinions, whatever they may be, 
with a sectarian spirit, to force the understandings of 
other men to their own modes of belief, and their own 
variable opinions. This alike includes those who yield 
up nothing to the genius of their age to correct the im- 
perfections of society, and those who, opposing all human 
experience, would annihilate what is most admirable in 
its institutions. 

The public mind is the creation of the Master- Writers — 
an axiom as demonstrable as any in Euclid, and a princi- 



352 LITERARY CHARACTER 

pie a< sure in its operation a< any in mechanics. Ba 
influence over philosophy, and Grotins's over the politi- 
cal state of soci- -till felt, and their principles 
practised tar more than in their own age. T :i of 
genius, in their solitude, and with their views not alu 
comprehended by their eontemporat -Ives 
the : - of our science and our legislation. When 
Locke and Montesquieu appeared, th< 

eminent were reviewed, the principle of toleration 
and the revolutions of opinion were dis- 
red. 

A noble thought of Yitruvius, who, of all the authors 
of antiquity, seems to have been most deeply iml 
with the feelings of the literary character, has often struck 
me by the grandeur and the truth of its conception. 
"The sentiments of excellent writers," he - iys, u although 
their persons be for ever absent, exist in future ag - : 
and in councils and debates are of greater authority than 
those of the persons who are present." 

But politicians affect to disbelieve that abstract princi- 
ples possess any considerable influence on the conduct of 
the subject. They tell us that ' ; in times of tranquillity 
they are not wanted, and in times of confusion they are 
never heard ;" this is the philosophy of men who do not 
choose that philosophy should disturb their fireside ! But 
it is in leisure, when they are not wanted, that the specu- 
lative part of mankind create them, and when they are 
wanted they are already prepared for the active multitude, 
who come, like a phalanx, pressing each other with a uni- 
ty of feeling and an integrity of force. Paley would not 
close his eyes on what was passing before him ; for, he 
has observed, that during the convulsions at Geneva, the 
political theory of Rousseau was prevalent in their con- 
tests ; while, in the political disputes of our country, the 
ideas of civil authority displayed in the works of Locke 
recurred in every form. The character of a great author 



INFLUENCE OP AUTHORS. 353 

can never be considered as subordinate in society ; nor 
do politicians secretly think so at the moment they are 
proclaiming it to the world, for, on the contrary, they 
consider the worst actions of men as of far less conse- 
quence than the propagation of their opinions. Politi- 
cians have exposed their disguised terrors. Books, as 
well as their authors, have been tried and condemned. 
Cromwell was alarmed when he saw the " Oceana " of 
Harrington, and dreaded the effects of that volume more 
than the plots of the Royalists ; while Charles II. trem- 
bled at an author only in his manuscript state, and in 
the height of terror, and to the honour of genius, it was 
decreed, that " Scribere est agere." — " The book of Tele- 
machus," says Madame de Stael, "was a courageous ac- 
tion." To insist with such ardour on the duties of a sover- 
eign, and to paint with such truth a voluptuous reign, 
disgraced Fenelon at the court of Louis XIV., but 
the virtuous author raised a statue for himself in all 
hearts. Massillon's Petit Careme was another of these 
animated recals of man to the sympathies of his nature, 
which proves the influence of an author ; for, during the 
contests of Louis XV. with the Parliaments, large edi- 
tions of this book were repeatedly printed and circulated 
through the kingdom. In such moments it is that a peo- 
ple find and know the value of a great author, whose 
work is the mighty organ which conveys their voice to 
their governors. 

But. if the influence of benevolent authors over society 
is great, it must not be forgotten that the abuse of this 
influence is terrific. Authors preside at a tribunal in 
Europe which is independent of all the powers of the 
earth — the tribunal of Opinion ! But since, as Sophocles 
has long declared, " Opinion is stronger than truth," 
it is unquestionable that the falsest and the most de- 
praved notions are, as long as these opinions main- 
tain their force, accepted as immutable truths; and 
23 



354: LITERARY CHARACTER. 

the mistakes of one man become the crimes of a whole 
people. 

Authors stand between the governors and the gov- 
erned, and form the single organ of both. Those who 
govern a nation cannot at the same time enlighten the 
people, for the executive power is not empirical ; and 
the governed cannot think, for they have no continuity 
of leisure. The great systems of thought, and the great 
discoveries in moral and political philosophy, have come* 
from the solitude of contemplative men, seldom occupied 
in public affairs or in private employments. The com- 
mercial world owes to two retired philosophers, Locke 
and Smith, those principles which dignify trade into a 
liberal pursuit, and connect it with the happiness and the 
glory of a people. A work in France, under the title of 
"L'Ami des Hommes," by the Marquis of Mirabeau, 
first spread there a general passion for agricultural pur- 
suits; and although the national ardour carried all to 
excess in the reveries of the " Economistes," yet marshes 
were drained and waste lands inclosed. The " Emilius " 
of Rousseau, whatever may be its errors and extrava- 
gances, operated a complete revolution in modern Europe, 
by communicating a bolder spirit to education, and im_ 
proving the physical force and character of man. An 
Italian marquis, whose birth and habits seemed little 
favourable to study, operated a moral revolution in the 
administration of the laws. Beccaria dared to plead in 
favour of humanity against the prejudices of many cen- 
turies in his small volume on " Crimes and Punishments," 
and at length abolished torture ; while the French advo- 
cates drew their principles from that book, rather than 
from their national code, and our Blackstone quoted it 
with admiration! Locke and Voltaire, having written 
on "Toleration," have long made us tolerant. In all 
such cases the authors were themselves entirely uncon- 
nected with their subjects, except as speculative writers. 



INFLUENCE OF AUTHORS. 355 

Such are the authors who become universal in public 
opinion ; and it then happens that the work itself meets 
with the singular fate which that great genius Smeaton 
said happened to his stupendous " Pharos :" " The nov- 
elty having yearly worn off, and the greatest real praise 
of the edifice being that nothing has happened to it — 
nothing has occurred to keep the talk of it alive." The 
fundamental principles of such works, after having long 
entered into our earliest instructions, become unquestion- 
able as self-evident propositions ; yet no one, perhaps, at 
this day can rightly conceive the great merits of Locke's 
Treatises on " Education," and on " Toleration ;" or the 
philosophical spirit of Montesquieu, and works of this 
high order, which first diffused a tone of thinking over 
Europe. The principles have become so incorporated 
with our judgment, and so interwoven with our feelings, 
that we can hardly now imagine the fervour they excited 
at the time, or the magnanimity of their authors in the 
decision of their opinions. Every first great monument 
of genius raises a new standard to our knowledge, from 
which the human mind takes its impulse and measures 
its advancement. The march of human thought through 
ages might be indicated by every great work as it is 
progressively succeeded by others. It stands like the 
golden milliary column in the midst of Rome, from which 
all others reckoned their distances. 

But a scene of less grandeur, yet more beautiful, is the 
view of the solitary author himself in his own study — so 
deeply occupied, that whatever passes before him never 
reaches his observation, while, working more than twelve 
hours every day, he still murmurs as the hour strikes ; 
the volume still lies open, the page still importunes — 
" And whence all this business ?" He has made a dis- 
covery for us ! that never has there been anything im- 
portant in the active world but what is reflected in the 
literary — books contain everything, even the falsehoods 



356 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

and the crimes which have been only projected by man ! 
This solitary man of genius is arranging the materials of 
instruction and curiosity from every country and every 
age ; he is striking out, in the concussion of new light, a 
new order of ideas for his own times ; he possesses secrets 
which men hide from their contemporaries, truths they 
dared not utter, facts they dared not discover. View 
him in the stillness of meditation, his eager spirit busied 
over a copious page, and his eye sparkling with gladness ! 
He has concluded what his countrymen will hereafter 
cherish as the legacy of genius — you see him now 
changed ; and the restlessness of his soul is thrown into 
his very gestures — could you listen to the vaticinator! 
But the next age only will quote his predictions. If he 
be the truly great author, he will be best comprehended 
by posterity, for the result of ten years of solitary medi- 
tation has often required a whole century to be under- 
stood and to be adopted. The ideas of Bishop Berkeley, 
in his " Theory of Vision," were condemned as a philo- 
sophical romance, and now form an essential part of 
every treatise of optics ; and " The History of Oracles," 
by Fontenelle, says La Harpe, which, in his youth, was 
censured for its impiety, the centenarian lived to see 
regarded as a proof of his respect for religion. 

" But what influence can this solitary man, this author 
of genius, have on his nation, when he has none in the 
very street in which he lives ? and it may be suspected 
as little in his own house, whose inmates are hourly prac- 
tising on the infantine simplicity which marks his char- 
acter, and that frequent abstraction from what is passing 
under his own eyes ?" 

This solitary man of genius is stamping his own char- 
acter on the minds of his own people. Take one in- 
stance, from others far more splendid, in the contrast 
presented by Franklin and Sir William Jones. The par- 
simonious habits, the money-getting precepts, the wary 



INFLUENCE OF AUTHORS. 357 

cunning, the little scruple about means, the fixed intent 
upon the end, of Dr. Franklin, imprinted themselves on 
his Americans. Loftier feelings could not elevate a man 
of genius who became the founder of a trading people, 
and who retained the early habits of a journeyman; 
while the elegant tastes of Sir William Jones could in- 
spire the servants of a commercial corporation to open new 
and vast sources of knowledge. A mere company of 
merchants, influenced by the literary character, enlarges 
the stores of the imagination and provides fresh materials 
for the history of human nature. 

Franklin, with that calm good sense which is freed 
from the passion of imagination, has himself declared this 
important truth relating to the literary character : — " I 
have always thought that one man of tolerable abilities 
may work great changes and accomplish great affairs 
among mankind, if he first forms a good plan ; and cut- 
ting off all amusements, or other employments that 
would divert his attention, makes the execution of that 
same plan his sole study and business." Fontenelle 
was of the same opinion, for he remarks that " a single 
great man is sufficient to accomplish a change in the 
taste of his age." The life of Granville Sharp is a 
striking illustration of the solitary force of individual 
character. 

It cannot be doubted that the great author, in the 
solitude of his study, has often created an epoch in the 
annals of mankind. A single man of genius arose in a 
barbarous period in Italy, who gave birth not only to 
Italian, but to European literature. Poet, orator, phi- 
losopher, geographer, historian, and antiquary, Petrarch 
kindled a line of light through his native land, while a 
crowd of followers hailed their father-genius, who had 
stamped his character on the age. Descartes, it has been 
observed, accomplished a change in the taste of his age 
by the perspicacity and method for which he was in- 



358 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

debted to his mathematical researches ; and " models of 
metaphysical analysis and logical discussions" in the 
works of Hume and Smith have had the same influence 
in the writings of our own time. 

Even genius not of the same colossal size may aspire 
to add to the progressive mass of human improvement 
by its own single effort. When an author writes on a 
national subject, he awakens all the knowledge which 
slumbers in a nation, and calls around him, as it were, 
every man of talent ; and though his own fame may be 
eclipsed by his successors, yet the emanation, the morn- 
ing light, broke from his solitary study. Our naturalist, 
Ray, though no man was more modest in his claims, 
delighted to tell a friend that " Since the publication of 
his catalogue of Cambridge plants, many were prompted 
to botanical studies, and to herbalise in their walks in 
the fields." Johnson has observed that " An emulation 
of study was raised by Cheke and Smith, to which even 
the present age perhaps owes many advantages, without 
remembering or knowing its benefactors. Rollin is 
only a compiler of history, and to the antiquary he is 
nothing ! But races yet unborn will be enchanted by 
that excellent man, in whose works " the heart speaks to 
the heart," and whom Montesquieu called " The Bee of 
France." The Bacons, the Newtons, and the Leibnitzes 
were insulated by their own creative powers, and stood 
apart from the world, till the dispersers of knowledge 
became their interpreters to the people, opening a com- 
munication between two spots, which, though close to 
each other, were long separated — the closet and the 
world! The Addisons, the Fontenelles, and the Fey- 
joos, the first popular authors in their nations who 
taught England, France, and Spain to become a reading 
people, while their fugitive page imbues with intellectual 
sweetness every uncultivated mind, like the perfumed 
mould taken up by the Persian swimmer. " It was but a 






INFLUENCE OF AUTHORS. 359 

piece of common earth, but so delicate was its fragrance, 
that he who found it, in astonishment asked whether it 
were musk or amber. 'I am nothing but earth; but 
roses were planted in my soil, and their odorous virtues 
have deliciously penetrated through all my pores : I have 
retained the infusion of sweetness, otherwise I had been 
but a lump of earth !'" 

I have said that authors produce their usefulness in 
privacy, and that their good is not of immediate applica- 
tion, and often unvalued by their own generation. On 
this occasion the name of Evelyn always occurs to me. 
This author supplied the public with nearly thirty works, 
at a time when taste and curiosity were not yet domicili- 
ated in our country ; his patriotism warmed beyond the 
eightieth year of his age, and in his dying hand he held 
another legacy for his nation. Evelyn conveys a pleas- 
ing idea of his own works and their design. He first 
taught his countrymen how to plant, then to build : and 
having taught them to be useful without doors, he then 
attempted to divert and occupy them within doors, by 
his treatises on chalcography, painting, medals, libraries. 
It was during the days of destruction and devastation 
both of woods and buildings, the civil wars of Charles 
the First, that a solitary author was projecting to make 
the nation delight in repairing their evil, by inspiring 
them with the love of agriculture and architecture. 
Whether his enthusiasm was introducing to us a taste 
for medals and prints, or intent on purifying the city 
from smoke and nuisances, and sweetening it by planta- 
tions of native plants, after having enriched our orchards 
and our gardens, placed summer-ices on our tables, and 
varied even the salads of our country; furnishing "a 
Gardener's Kalendar," which, as Cowley said, was to last 
as long " as months and years ;" whether the philosopher 
of the Royal Society, or the lighter satirist of the toilet, 
or the fine moralist for active as well as contemplative 



360 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

life — in all these changes of a studious life, the better part 
of his history has not yet been told. While Britain re- 
tains her awful situation among the nations of Europe, 
the "Sylva" of Evelyn will endure with her triumphant 
oaks. In the third edition of that work the heart of the 
patriot expands at its result ; he tells Charles II. " how 
many millions of timber trees, besides infinite others, have 
been propagated and planted at the instigation and by 
the sole direction of this work." It was an author in 
his studious retreat who, easting a prophetic eye on the 
age we live in, secured the late victories of our naval 
sovereignty. Inquire at the Admiralty how the fleets of 
Nelson have been constructed, and they can tell you that 
it was with the oaks which the genius of Evelyn planted.* 

The same character existed in France, where De 
Serres, in 1599, composed a work on the cultivation of 
mulberry-trees, in reference to the art of raising silk- 
worms. He taught his fellow-citizens to convert a leaf 
into silk, and silk to become the representative of gold. 
Our author encountered the hostility of the prejudices of 
his times, even from Sully, in giving his country one of 
her staple commodities; but I lately received a medal 
recently struck in honour of De Serres by the Agri- 
cultural Society of the Department of the Seine. We 
slowly commemorate the intellectual characters of our 
own country ; and our men of genius are still defrauded 
of the debt we are daily incurring of their posthumous 
fame. Let monuments be raised and let medals be 
struck ! They are sparks of glory which might be 
scattered through the next age ! 

There is a singleness and unity in the pursuits of 

* Since this was first printed, the " Diary " of Evelyn has appeared ; 
and although it could not add to his general character, yet I was not 
too sanguine in my anticipations of the diary of so perfect a literary 
character, who has shown how his studies were intermingled with the 
business of life. 



CONSANGUINITY OF AUTHORS. 361 

genius which is carried on through all ages, and will for 
ever connect the nations of the earth. The immortality 
of Thought exists for Man ! The veracity of 
Herodotus, after more than two thousand years, is now 
receiving a fresh confirmation. The single and precious 
idea of genius, however obscure, is eventually disclosed ; 
for original discoveries have often been the developments 
of former knowledge. The system of the circulation 
of the blood appears to have been obscurely conjectured 
by Servetus, who wanted experimental facts to support 
his hypothesis : Vesalius had an imperfect perception of 
the right motion of the blood: Caesalpinus admits a 
circulation without comprehending its consequences ; at 
length our Harvey, by patient meditation and penetra- 
ting sagacity, removed the errors of his predecessors, and 
demonstrated the true system. Thus, too, Hartley 
expanded the hint of " the association of ideas " from 
Locke, and raised a system on what Locke had only 
used for an accidental illustration. The beautiful theory 
of vision by Berkeley, was taken up by him just where 
Locke had dropped it : and as Professor Dugald Stewart 
describes, by following out his principles to their remoter 
consequences, Berkeley brought out a doctrine which was 
as true as it seemed novel. Lydgate's " Fall of Princes," 
says Mr. Campbell, " probably suggested ' to Lord 
Sackville the idea of his "Mirror for Magistrates." The 
" Mirror for Magistrates " again gave hints to Spenser in 
allegory, and may also " have possibly suggested to 
Shakspeare the idea of his historical plays." When 
indeed we find that that great original, Hogarth, adopted 
the idea of his " Idle and Industrious Apprentice," from 
the old comedy of Eastward Hoe, we easily conceive 
that some of the most original inventions of genius, 
whether the more profound or the more agreeable, may 
thus be tracked in the snow of time. 

In the history of genius therefore there is no 



362 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

chronology, for to its votaries everything it has done is 
present — the earliest attempt stands connected with the 
most recent. This continuity of ideas characterises the* 
human mind, and seems to yield an anticipation of its 
immortal nature. 

There is a consanguinity in the characters of men of 
genius, and a genealogy may be traced among their 
races. Men of genius in their different classes, living at 
distinct periods, or in remote countries, seem to reappear 
under another name ; and in this manner there exists in 
the literary character an eternal transmigration. In the 
great march of the human intellect the same individual 
spirit seems still occupying the same place, and is still 
carrying on, with the same powers, his great work 
through a line of centuries. It was on this principle that 
one great poet has recently hailed his brother as " the 
Ariosto of the North," and Ariosto as " the Scott of the 
South." And can we deny the real existence of the 
genealogy of genius ? Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, and 
Newton ! this is a single line of descent ! 

Aristotle, Hobbes, and Locke, Descartes, and Newton, 
approximate more than we imagine. The same chain of 
intellect which Aristotle holds, through the intervals of 
time, is held by them ; and links will only be added by 
their successors. The naturalists Pliny, Gesner, Aldrovan- 
dus, and Buffon, derive differences in their characters 
from the spirit of the times ; but each only made an 
accession to the family estate, while he was the legitimate 
representative of the family of the naturalists. Aristo- 
phanes, Moliere, and Foote, are brothers of the family of 
national wits ; the wit of Aristophanes was a part of the 
common property, and Moliere and Foote were Aristo- 
phanic. Plutarch, La Mothe le Vayer, and Bayle, alike 
busied in amassing the materials of human thought and 
human action, with the same vigorous and vagrant 
curiosity, must have had the same habits of life. If 



CONSANGUINITY OF GENIUS. 363 

Plutarch were credulous, La Mothe Le Vayer sceptical, 
and Bayle philosophical, all that can be said is, that 
though the heirs of the family may differ in their 
dispositions, no one will arraign the integrity of the lineal 
descent. Varre did for the Romans what Pausanias had 
done for the Greeks, and Montfaucon for the French, and 
Camden for ourselves. 

My learned and reflecting friend, whose original re- 
searches have enriched our national history, has this 
observation on the character of Wickliffe : — " To com- 
plete our idea of the importance of Wickliffe, it is only 
necessary to add, that as his writings made John Huss 
the reformer of Bohemia, so the writings of John Huss 
led Martin Luther to be the reformer of Germany ; so 
extensive and so incalculable are the consequences which 
sometimes follow from human actions."* Our historian 
has accompanied this by giving the very feelings of 
Luther in early life on his first perusal of the works of 
John Huss ; we see the spark of creation caught at the 
moment : a striking influence of the generation of char- 
acter ! Thus a father-spirit has many sons ; and several 
of the great revolutions in the history of man have been 
carried on by that secret creation of minds visibly oper- 
ating on human affairs. In the history of the human 
mind, he takes an imperfect view, who is confined to 
contemporary knowledge, as well as he who stops short 
with the Ancients. Those who do not carry researches 
through the genealogical lines of genius, mutilate their 
minds. 

Such, then, is the influence of Authoes ! — those " great 
lights of the world," by whom the torch of genius has 
been successively seized and perpetually transferred from 
hand to hand, in the fleeting scene. Descartes delivers 
it to Newton, Bacon to Locke ; and the continuity of 
human affairs, through the rapid generations of man, is 
maintained from age to age ! 

* Turner's " History of England " vol. Li., p. 432. 



LITERARY MISCELLANIES. 



LITERARY MISCELLANIES. 



MISCELLANISTS. 

MISCELLAOTSTS are the most popular writers 
among every people; for it is they who form a 
communication between the learned and the unlearned, 
and, as it were, throw a bridge between those two great 
divisions of the public. Literary Miscellanies are classed 
among philological studies. The studies of philology 
formerly consisted rather of the labours of arid gram- 
marians and conjectural critics, than of that more elegant 
philosophy which has, within our own time, been intro- 
duced into literature, and which, by its graces and inves- 
tigation, augment the beauties of original genius. This 
delightful province has been termed in Germany the 
^Esthetic, from a Greek term signifying sentiment or 
feeling. ^Esthetic critics fathom the depths, or run with 
the current of an author's thoughts, and the sympathies 
of such a critic offer a supplement to the genius of the 
original writer. Longinus and Addison are ^Esthetic 
critics. The critics of the adverse school always look 
for a precedent, and if none is found, woe to the origin- 
ality of a great writer ! 

Very elaborate criticisms have been formed by eminent 
writers, in which great learning and acute logic have only 
betrayed the absence of the ^Esthetic faculty. Warbur- 
ton called Addison an empty superficial writer, destitute 
himself of an atom of Addison's taste for the beautiful ; 
and Johnson is a flagrant instance that great powers of 



368 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

reasoning are more fatal to the works of imagination 
than had ever been suspected. 

By one of these learned critics was Montaigne, the 
venerable father of modern Miscellanies, called " a bold 
ignorant fellow." To thinking readers, this critical 
summary will appear mysterious ; for Montaigne had 
imbibed the spirit of all the moral writers of antiquity ; 
and although he has made a capricious complaint of a 
defective memory, we cannot but wish the complaint had 
been more real ; for we discover in his works such a 
gathering of knowledge that it seems at times to stifle 
his own energies. Montaigne was censured by Scaliger, 
as Addison was censured by Warburton ; because both, 
like Socrates, smiled at that mere erudition which con- 
sists of knowing the thoughts of others and having no 
thoughts of our own. To weigh syllables, and to arrange 
dates, to adjust texts, and to heap annotations, has gener- 
ally proved the absence of the higher faculties. When 
a more adventurous spirit of this herd attempts some 
novel discovery, often men of taste behold, with indig- 
nation, the perversions of their understanding; and a 
Bentley in his Milton, or a Warburton on a Virgil, had 
either a singular imbecility concealed under the arro- 
gance of the scholar, or they did not believe what they 
told the public ; the one in his extraordinary invention 
of an interpolating editor, and the other in his more 
extraordinary explanation of the Eleusinian mysteries. 
But what was still worse, the froth of the head became 
venom, when it reached the heart. 

Montaigne has also been censured for an apparent 
vanity, in making himself the idol of his lucubrations. 
If he had not done this, he had not performed the prom- 
ise he makes at the commencement of his preface. An 
engaging tenderness prevails in these naive expressions 
which shall not be injured by a version. " Je Pay voue 
a la commodite particuliere de mes parens et amis ; a ce 



MISCELLANISTS. 369 

que m'ayans perdu (ce qu'ils ont a faire bientost) ils y 
puissent retrouver quelques traicts de mes humeurs, et 
que par ce moyen ils nourrissent plus entiere et plus vifue 
la conoissance qu'ils ont eu de moi." 

Those authors who appear sometimes to forget they 
are writers, and remember they are men, will be our 
favourites. He who writes from the heart, will write to 
the heart ; every one is enabled to decide on his merits, 
and they will not be referred to learned heads, or a dis- 
tant day. " Why," says Boileau, " are my verses read 
read by all? it is only because they speak truths, and 
that I am convinced of the truths I write." 

Why have some of our fine writers interested more 
than others, who have not displayed inferior talents? 
Why is Addison still the first of our essayists ? he has 
sometimes been excelled in criticisms more philosophical, 
in topics more interesting, and in diction more coloured. 
But there is a personal charm in the character he has 
assumed in his periodical Miscellanies, which is felt with 
such a gentle force, that we scarce advert to it. He has 
painted forth his little humours, his individual feelings, 
and eternised himself to his readers. Johnson and 
Hawkesworth we receive with respect, and we dismiss 
with awe ; we come from their writings as from public 
lectures, and from Addison's as from private conversa- 
tions. Montaigne preferred those of the ancients, who 
appear to write under a conviction of what they said ; 
the eloquent Cicero declaims but coldly on liberty, while 
in the impetuous Brutus may be perceived a man who is 
resolved to purchase it with his life. We know little of 
Plutarch ; yet a spirit of honesty and persuasion in his 
works expresses a philosophical character capable of 
imitating, as well as admiring, the virtues he records. 

Sterne perhaps derives a portion of his celebrity from 
the same influence ; he interests us in his minutest mo- 
tions, for he tells us all he feels. Richardson was sensi- 
24 



370 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

ble of the power with which these minute strokes of 
description enter the heart, and which are so many fast- 
enings to which the imagination clings. He says, u If I 
give speeches and conversations, I ought to give them 
justly ; for the humours and characters of persons cannot 
be known, unless I repeat what they say, and their m 
ner of saying." I confess I am infinitely pleased when 
Sir William Temple acquaints us with the size of his 
orange-trees, and with the flavour of his peaches and 
grapes, confessed by Frenchmen to equal those of France ; 
with his having had the honour to naturalise in this 
country four kinds of grapes, with his liberal distribution 
of them, because "he ever thought all things of this kind 
the commoner they are the better." In a word, with his 
passionate attachment to his garden, where he desired his 
heart to be buried, of his desire to escape from great em- 
ployments, and having passed five years without going 
to town, where, by the way, " he had a large house al- 
ways ready to receive him." Dryden has interspersed 
many of these little particulars in his prosaic compositions, 
and I think that his character and dispositions may be 
more correctly acquired by uniting these scattered no- 
tices, than by any biographical account which can* now 
be given of this man of genius. 

From this agreeable mode of writing, a species of com-" 
positions may be discriminated, which seems above all 
others to identify the reader with the writer ; composi- 
tions which are often discovered in a fugitive state, but to 
which their authors were prompted by the fine impulses 
of genius, derived from the peculiarity of their situation. 
Dictated by the heart, or polished with the fondness of 
delight, these productions are impressed by the seductive 
eloquence of genius, or attach us by the sensibility of 
taste. The object thus selected is no task imposed on 
the mind of the writer for the mere ambition of litera- 
ture, but is a voluntary effusion, warm with all the sensa- 



MISCELLANISTS. 371 

tions of a pathetic writer. In a word, they are the com- 
positions of genius, on a subject in which it is most deeply 
interested; which it revolves on all its sides, which it 
paints in all its tints, and which it finishes with the same 
ardour it began. Among such works may be placed the 
exiled Bolingbroke's " Reflections upon Exile ;" the re- 
tired Petrarch and Zimmerman's Essays on " Solitude ;" 
the imprisoned Boetkius's " Consolations of Philosophy ;" 
the oppressed Pierius Yalerianus's Catalogue of" Literary 
Calamities ;" the deformed Hay's Essay on "Deformity ;" 
the projecting De Foe's "Essays on Projects;" the lib- 
eral Shenstone's Poem on " Economy." 

We may respect the profound genius of voluminous 
writers ; they are a kind of painters who occupy great 
room, and fill up, as a satirist expresses it, " an acre of 
canvas." But we love to dwell on those more delicate 
pieces, — a group of Cupids ; a Venus emerging from the 
waves ; a Psyche or an Aglaia, which embellish the cabi- 
net of the man of taste. 

It should, indeed, be the characteristic of good Miscel- 
lanies, to be multifarious and concise. Usbek, the Per- 
sian of Montesquieu, is one of the profoundest philoso- 
phers, his letters are, however, but concise pages. Poche- 
foucault and La Bruyere are not superficial observers of 
human nature, although they have only written sentences. 
Of Tacitus it has been finely remarked by Montesquieu, 
that "he abridged everything because he saw everything." 
Montaigne approves of Plutarch and Seneca, because their 
loose papers were suited to his dispositions, and where 
knowledge is acquired without a tedious study. " It is," 
said he, " no great attempt to take one in hand, and I 
give over at pleasure, for they have no sequel or con- 
nexion." La Fontaine agreeably applauds short com- 
positions : 

Les longs ouvrages me font peur ; 

Loin d'epuiser une matiere, 

On n'en doit prendre que la fleur ; 



372 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

and Old Francis Osborne has a coarse and ludicrous 
image in favour of such opuscula ; he says, " Huge vol- 
umes, like the ox roasted whole at Bartholomew fair, may- 
proclaim plenty of labour and invention, but afford less 
of what is delicate, savoury, and well concocted, than 
smaller pieces.'''' To quote so light a genius as the en- 
chanting La Fontaine, and so solid a mind as the sensible 
Osborne, is taking in all the climates of the human mind ; 
it is touching at the equator, and pushing on to the pole. 

Montaigne's works have been called by a cardinal 
" The Breviary of Idlers." It is therefore the book of 
man ; for all men are idlers ; we have hours which we 
pass with lamentation, and which we know are always 
returning. At those moments miscellanists are conform- 
able to all our humours. TVe dart along their airy and 
concise page ; and their lively anecdote or their profound 
observation are so many interstitial pleasures in our list- 
less hours. 

The ancients were great admirers of miscellanies ; Au- 
lus Gellius has preserved a copious list of titles of such 
works. These titles are so numerous, and include such 
gay and pleasing descriptions, that we may infer by their 
number that they were greatly admired by the public, 
and by their titles that they prove the great delight their 
authors experienced in their composition. Among the 
titles are " a basket of flowers ;" " an embroidered man- 
tle ;" and " a variegated meadow." Such a miscellanist 
as was the admirable Erasmus deserves the happy de- 
scription which Plutarch with an elegant enthusiasm 
bestows on Menander : he calls him the delight of phi- 
losophers fatigued with study ; that they have recourse 
to his works as to a meadow enamelled with flowers, 
where the sense is delighted by a purer air ; and very 
elegantly adds, that Menander has a salt peculiar to him- 
self, drawn from the same waters that gave birth to 
Venus. 



PREFACES. 373 

The Troubadours, Conteurs, and Jongleurs, practised 
what is yet called in the southern parts of France, Le 
guay /Saber, or the gay science. I consider these as the 
Miscellanists of their day ; they had their grave morali- 
ties, their tragical histories, and their sportive tales; 
their verse and their prose. The village was in motion 
at their approach ; the castle was opened to the ambu- 
latory poets, and the feudal hypochondriac listened to 
their solemn instruction and their airy fancy. I would 
call miscellaneous composition Le gtjat Saber, and I 
would have every miscellaneous writer as solemn and as 
gay, as various and as pleasing, as these lively artists of 
versatility. 

Nature herself is most delightful in her miscellaneous 
scenes. "When I hold a volume of miscellanies, and run 
over with avidity the titles of its contents, my mind is 
enchanted, as if it were placed among the landscapes of 
Valais, which Rousseau has described with such pictur- 
esque beauty. I fancy myself seated in a cottage amid 
those mountains, those valleys, those rocks, encircled by 
the enchantments of optical illusion. I look, and behold 
at once the united seasons — " All climates in one place, 
all seasons in one instant." I gaze at once on a hundred 
rainbows, and trace the romantic figures of the shifting 
clouds. I seem to be in a temple dedicated to the ser- 
vice of the Goddess Variety. 



PREFACES. 

I declare myself infinitely delighted by a preface. Is 
it exquisitely written ? no literary morsel is more deli- 
cious. Is the author inveterately dull ? it is a kind of 
preparatory information, which may be very useful. It 
argues a deficiency in taste to turn over an elaborate 



371 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

preface unread ; for it is the attar of the author's roses ; 
every drop distilled at an immense cost. It is the reason 
of the reasoning, and the folly of the foolish. 

I do not wish, however, to conceal that several writers, 
as well as readers, have spoken very disrespectfully of 
this species of literature. That fine writer Montesquieu, 
in closing the preface to his " Persian Letters," says, " I 
do not praise my ' Persians ;' because it would be a very 
tedious thing, put in a place already very tedious of it- 
self ; I mean a preface." Spence, in the preface to his 
" Polymetis," inform us, that " there is not any sort of 
writing which he sits down to with so much unwilling- 
ness as that of prefaces ; and as he believes most people 
are not much fonder of reading them than he is of writing 
them, he shall get over this as fast as he can." Pelisson 
warmly protested against prefatory composition; but 
when he published the works of Sarrasin, was wise enough 
to compose a very pleasing one. He, indeed, endeavoured 
to justify himself for acting against his own opinions, 
by this ingenious excuse, that, like funeral honours, it is 
proper to show the utmost regard for them when given 
to others, but to be inattentive to them for ourselves. 

Notwithstanding all this evidence, I have some good 
reasons for admiring prefaces ; and barren as the investi- 
gation may appear, some literary amusement can be 
gathered. 

In the first place, I observe that a prefacer is generally 
a most accomplished liar. Is an author to be introduced 
to the public ? the preface is as genuine a panegyric, 
and nearly as long a one, as that of Pliny's on the Em- 
peror Trajan. Such a preface is ringing an alarum bell 
for an author. If we look closer into the characters of 
these masters of ceremony, who thus sport with and defy 
the judgment of their reader, and who, by their extrava- 
gant panegyric, do considerable injury to the cause of 
taste, we discover that some accidental occurrence has 



PREFACES. 375 

occasioned this vehement affection for the author, and 
which, like that of another kind of love, makes one com- 
mit so many extravagances. 

Prefaces are indeed rarely sincere. It is justly ob- 
served by Shenstone, in his prefatory Essay to the 
" Elegies," that " discourses prefixed to poetry inculcate 
such tenets as may exhibit the performance to the great- 
est advantage. The fabric is first raised, and the meas- 
ures by which we are to judge of it are afterwards ad- 
justed." This observation might be exemplified by more 
instances than some readers might choose to read. It 
will be sufficient to observe with what art both Pope and 
Fontenelle have drawn up their Essays on the nature of 
Pastoral Poetry, that the rules they wished to establish 
might be adapted to their own pastorals. Has accident 
made some ingenious student apply himself to a subor- 
dinate branch of literature, or to some science which is 
not highly esteemed — look in the preface for its sublime 
panegyric. Collectors of coins, dresses, and butterflies, 
have astonished the world with eulogiums which would 
raise their particular studies into the first ranks of 
philosophy. 

It would appear that there is no lie to which a prefacer 
is not tempted. I pass over the commodious prefaces of 
Dryden, which were ever adapted to the poem and not 
to poetry, to the author and not to literature. 

The boldest preface-liar was Aldus Manutius, who, 
having printed an edition of Aristophanes, first published 
in the preface that Saint Chrysostom was accustomed to 
place this comic poet under his pillow, that he might 
always have his works at hand. As, in that age, a saint 
was supposed to possess every human talent, good taste 
not excepted, Aristophanes thus recommended became 
a general favourite. The anecdote lasted for nearly two 
centuries ; and what was of greater consequence to Al- 
dus, quickened the sale of his Aristophanes. This inge- 



376 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

nious invention of the prefacer of Aristophanes at length 
was detected by Menage. 

The insincerity of prefaces arises whenever an author 
would disguise his solicitude for his work, by appearing 
negligent, and even undesirous of its success. A writer 
will rarely conclude such a preface without betraying 
himself. I think that even Dr. Johnson forgot his sound 
dialectic in the admirable Preface to his Dictionary. In 
one part he says, " haying laboured this work with so 
much application, I cannot but have some degree of pa- 
rental fondness." But in his conclusion he tells us, " I 
dismiss it with frigid tranquillity, having little to fear or 
hope from censure or from praise." I deny the doctor's 
" frigidity." This polished period exhibits an affected 
stoicism, which no writer ever felt for the anxious labour 
of a great portion of life, addressed not merely to a class 
of readers, but to literary Europe. 

But if prefaces are rarely sincere or just, they are, not- 
withstanding, literary opuscula in which the author is 
materially concerned. A work with a poor preface, like 
a person who comes with an indifferent recommendation, 
must display uncommon merit to master our prejudices, 
and to please us, as it were, in spite of ourselves. Works 
ornamented by a finished preface, such as Johnson not 
infrequently presented to his friends or his booksellers, 
inspire us with awe ; we observe a veteran guard placed 
in the porch, and we are induced to conclude from this 
appearance that some person of eminence resides in the 
place itself. 

The public are treated with contempt when an author 
professes to publish his puerilities. This Warburton did, 
in his pompous edition of Shakspeare. In the preface he 
informed the public, that his notes " were among his 
younger amusements, when he turned over these sort of 
writers." This ungracious compliment to Shakspeare and 
the public, merited that perfect scourging which our 



PREFACES. 377 

haughty commentator received from the sarcastic 
" Canons of Criticism."* Scudery was a writer of some 
genius, and great variety. His prefaces are remarkable 
for their gasconades. In his epic poem of Alaric, he 
says, " I have such a facility in writing verses, and also 
in my invention, that a poem of double its length would 
have cost me little trouble. Although it contains only 
eleven thousand lines, I believe that longer epics do not 
exhibit more embellishments than mine." And to con- 
clude with one more student of this class, Amelot de la 
Houssaie, in the preface to his translation of " The Prince" 
of Machiavel, instructs us, that " he considers his copy 
as superior to the original, because it is everywhere in- 
telligible, and Machiavel is frequently obscure." I have 
seen in the playbills of strollers, a very pompous descrip- 
tion of the triumphant entry of Alexander into Babylon ; 
had they said nothing about the triumph, it might have 
passed without exciting ridicule ; and one might not so 
maliciously have perceived how ill the four candle-snuffers 
crawled as elephants, and the triumphal car discovered 
its want of a lid. But having pre-excited attention, we 
had full leisure to sharpen our eye. To these imprudent 
authors and actors we may apply a Spanish proverb, 
which has the peculiar quaintness of that people, Aviendo 
pi % egonado vino, venden viiiagre, : " Having cried up their 
wine, they sell us vinegar." 

A ridiculous humility in a preface is not less despica- 
ble. Many idle apologies were formerly in vogue for 
publication, and formed a literary cant, of which now 
the meanest writers perceive the futility. A literary 
anecdote of the Romans has been preserved, which is 
sufficiently curious. One Albums, in the preface to his 
Roman History, intercedes for pardon for his numerous 
blunders of phraseology ; observing that they were the 

* See the essay on Warburton and his disputes in " Quarrels of 
Authors."— Ed. 



378 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

more excusable, as he had composed his history in the 
Greek language, with which lie was not so familiar as his 
maternal tongue. Cato severely rallies him on this; and 
justly observes, that our Albums had merited the pardon 
he solicits, if a decree of the senate had compelled him 
thus to have composed it, and he could not have obtained 
a dispensation. The avowal of our ignorance of the 
language we employ is like that excuse which some 
writers make for composing on topics in which they are 
little conversant. A reader's heart is not so easily molli- 
fied ; and it is a melancholy truth for literary men that 
the pleasure of abusing an author is generally superior 
to that of admiring him. One appears to ^lisplay more 
critical acumen than the other, by showing that though 
we do not choose to take the trouble of writing, we have 
infinitely more genius than the author. These suppliant 
prefacers are described by Boileau. 

Un auteur a genoux dans une humble preface 
Au lecteur qu'il ennuie a beau demander grace ; 
II ne gagnera rien sur ce juge irrite, 
Qui lui fait son proces de pleine autorite. 

Low in a humble preface authors kneel ; 
In vain, the wearied* reader's heart is steeL 
Callous, that irritated judge with awe, 
Inflicts the penalties and arms the law. 

The most entertaining prefaces in our language are 
those of Dryden ; and though it is ill-naturedly said, by 
Swift, that they were merely formed 

To raise the volume's price a shilling, 

yet these were the earliest commencements of English 
criticism, and the first attempt to restrain the capricious- 
ness of readers, and to form a national taste. Dryden 
has had the candour to acquaint us with his secret of 
prefatory composition; for in that one to his Tales he 
says, " the nature of preface- writing is rambling ; never 



PREFACES. 379 

wholly out of the way, nor in it. This I have learnt 
from the practice of honest Montaigne." There is no 
great risk in establishing this observation as an axiom in 
literature ; for should a prefacer loiter, it is never diffi- 
cult to get rid of lame persons, by escaping from them ; 
and the reader may make a preface as concise as he 
chooses. 

It is possible for an author to paint himself in amiable 
colours, in this useful page, without incurring the con- 
tempt of egotism. After a writer has rendered himself 
conspicuous by his industry or his genius, his admirers 
are not displeased to hear something relative to him from 
himself. Hayley, in the preface to his poems, has con- 
veyed an amiable feature in his personal character, by 
giving the cause of his devotion to literature as the only 
mode by which he could render himself of some utility 
to his country. There is a modesty in the prefaces of 
Pope, even when this great poet collected his immortal 
works ; and in several other writers of the most elevated 
genius, in a Hume and a Robertson, which becomes their 
happy successors to imitate, and inferior writers to con- 
template with awe. 

There is in prefaces a due respect to be shown to the 
public and to ourselves. He that has no sense of self- 
dignity, will not inspire any reverence in others ; and the 
ebriety of vanity will be sobered by the alacrity we all 
feel in disturbing the dreams of self-love. If we dare 
not attempt the rambling prefaces of a Dryden, we may 
still entertain the reader, and soothe him into good-humour 
for our own interest. This, perhaps, will be best ob- 
tained by making the preface (like the symphony to an 
opera) to contain something analogous to the work itself, 
to attune the mind into a harmony of tone.* 

* See " Curiosities of Literature," vol. i., for an article on Prefaces. 



380 LITERARY CHARACTER, 



STYLE. 

Every period of literature has its peculiar style, derived 
from some author of reputation ; and the history df a 
language, as an object of taste, might be traced through 
a collection of ample quotations from the most celebrated 
authors of each period. 

To Johnson may be attributed the establishment of 
our present refinement, and it is with truth he observes 
of his " Rambler," " That he had laboured to refine our 
language to grammatical purity, and to clear it from 
colloquial barbarisms, licentious idioms, and irregular 
combinations, and that he has added to the elegance of 
its construction and to the harmony of its cadence." In 
this description of his own refinement in style and gram- 
matical accuracy, Johnson probably alluded to the happy 
carelessness of Addison, whose charm of natural ease 
long afterwards he discovered. But great inelegance of 
diction disgraced our language even so late as in 1736, 
when the " Inquiry into the Life of Homer " was pub- 
lished. That author was certainly desirous of all the 
graces of composition, and his volume by its singular 
sculptures evinces his inordinate affection for his work. 
This fanciful writer had a taste for polished writing, yet 
he abounds in expressions which now would be consid- 
ered as impure in literary composition. Such vulgarisms 
are common — the Greeks fell to their old trade of one 
tribe expelling another — the scene is always at Athens, 
and all the pother is some little jilting story — the haughty 
Roman snuffed at the suppleness. If such diction had 
not been usual with good writers at that period, I should 
not have quoted Blackwall. Middleton, in his " Life of 
Cicero," though a man of classical taste, and an historian 
of a classical era, could not preserve himself from collo- 
quial inelegances ; the greatest characters are levelled by 



STYLE. 381 

the poverty of his style. Warburton, and his imitator 
Hurd, and other living critics of that school, are loaded 
with familiar idioms, which at present would debase even 
the style of conversation. 

Such was the influence of the elaborate novelty of 
Johnson, that every writer in every class servilely copied 
the Latinised style, ludicrously mimicking the contor- 
tions and re-echoing the sonorous nothings of our great 
lexicographer ; the novelist of domestic life, or the agri- 
culturist in a treatise on turnips, alike aimed at the poly- 
syllabic force, and the cadenced period. Such was the 
condition of English style for more than twenty years. 

Some argue in favour of a natural style, and reiterate 
the opinion of many great critics that proper ideas will 
be accompanied by proper words ; but though supported 
by the first authorities, they are not perhaps sufficiently 
precise in their definition. Writers may think justly, and 
yet write without any effect ; while a splendid style may 
cover a vacuity of thought. Does not this evident fact 
prove that style and thinking have not that inseparable 
connexion which many great writers have pronounced ? 
Milton imagined that beautiful thoughts produce beauti- 
ful expression. He says, 

Then feed on thoughts that voluntary move 
Harmonious numbers. 

Writing is justly called an art ; and Rousseau says, it is 
not an art easily acquired. Thinking may be the founda- 
tion of style, but it is not the superstructure ; it is the 
marble of the edifice, but not its architecture. The art 
of presenting our thoughts to another, is often a process 
of considerable time and labour ; and the delicate task 
of correction, in the development of ideas, is reserved 
only for writers of fine taste. There are several modes 
of presenting an idea ; vulgar readers are only suscepti- 
ble of the strong and palpable stroke: but there are 



382 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

many shades of sentiment, which to seize on and to paint 
is the pride and the labour of a skilful writer. A beau- 
tiful simplicity itself is a species of refinement, and no 
writer more solicitously corrected his works than Hume, 
who excels in this mode of composition. The philoso- 
pher highly approves of Addison's definition of fine 
writing, who says, that it consists of sentiments which 
are natural, without being obvious. This is a definition 
of thought rather than of composition. Shenstone has 
hit the truth ; for fine writing he defines to be generally 
the effect of spontaneous thoughts and a laboured style. 
Addison was not insensible to these charms, and he felt 
the seductive art of Cicero when he said, that " there is 
as much difference in apprehending a thought clothed in 
Cicero's language and that of a common author, as in 
seeing an object by the light of a taper, or by the light 
of the sun." 

Mannerists in style, however great their powers, rather 
excite the admiration than the affection of a man of taste ; 
because their habitual art dissipates that illusion of sin- 
cerity, which we love to believe is the impulse which 
places the pen in the hand of an author. Two eminent 
literary mannerists are Cicero and Johnson. We know 
these great men considered their eloquence as a deceptive 
art ; of any subject, it had been indifferent to them which 
side to adopt ; and in reading their elaborate works, our 
ear is more frequently gratified by the ambitious magni- 
ficence of their diction, than our heart penetrated by the 
pathetic enthusiasm of their sentiments. Writers who 
are not mannerists, but who seize the appropriate tone of 
their subject, appear to feel a conviction of what they at- 
tempt to persuade their reader. It is observable, that it 
is impossible to imitate with uniform felicity the noble 
simplicity of a pathetic writer ; while the peculiarities of 
a mannerist are so far from being difficult, that they are 
displayed with nice exactness by middling writers, who, 



GOLDSMITH AND JOHNSON. 383 

although their own natural manner had nothing interest- 
ing, have attracted notice by such imitations. We may 
apply to some monotonous mannerists these verses of 
Boileau : 

Voulez-vous du public meriter les amours ? 
Sans cesse en ecrivant variez vos discours. 
On lit peu ces auteurs nes pour nous ennuier, 
Qui toujours sur un ton semblent psalmodier. 

"Would you the public's envied favours gain ? 
Ceaseless, in writing, variegate the strain ; 
The heavy author, who the fancy calms, 
Seems in one tone to chant his nasal psalms. 

Every style is excellent, if it be proper ; and that style 
is most proper which can best convey the intentions of 
the author to his reader. And, after all, it is style alone 
by which posterity will judge of a great work, for an 
author can have nothing truly his own but his style ; 
facts, scientific discoveries, and every kind of informa- 
tion, may be seized by all, but an author's diction can- 
not be taken from him. Hence very learned writers have 
been neglected, while their learning has not been lost to 
the world, by having been given by writers with more 
amenity. It is therefore the duty of an author to learn 
to write as well as to learn to think ; and this art can 
only be obtained by the habitual study of his sensations, 
and an intimate acquaintance with the intellectual facul- 
ties. These are the true prompters of those felicitous ex- 
pressions which give a tone congruous to the subject, and 
which invest our thoughts with all the illusion, the beauty, 
and motion of lively perception. 



GOLDSMITH AND JOHNSON". 

WE should not censure artists and writers for their 
attachment to their favourite excellence. Who but an 



384 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

artist can value the ceaseless inquietudes of arduous per- 
fection ; can trace the remote possibilities combined in a 
close union ; the happy arrangement and the novel varia- 
tion ? He not only is affected by the performance like 
the man of taste, but is influenced by a peculiar sensation ; 
for while he contemplates the apparent beauties, he traces 
in his own mind those invisible processes by which the 
final beauty was accomplished. Hence arises that species 
of comparative criticism which one great author usually 
makes of his own manner with that of another great 
writer, and which so often causes him to be stigmatised 
with the most unreasonable vanity. 

The character of Goldsmith, so underrated in his own 
day, exemplifies this principle in the literary character. 
That pleasing writer, without any perversion of intellect 
or inflation of vanity, might have contrasted his powers 
with those of Johnson, and might, according to his own 
ideas, have considered himself as not inferior to his more 
celebrated and learned rival. 

Goldsmith might have preferred, the felicity of his own 
genius, which like a native stream flowed from a natural 
source, to the elaborate powers of Johnson, which in some 
respects may be compared to those artificial waters which 
throw their sparkling currents in the air, to fall into mar- 
ble basins. He might have considered that he had em- 
bellished philosophy with poetical elegance ; and have 
preferred the paintings of 'his descriptions, to the terse 
versification and the pointed sentences of Johnson. He 
might have been more pleased with the faithful represen- 
tations of English manners in his " Vicar of Wakefield," 
than with the borrowed grandeur and the exotic fancy 
of the Oriental Rasselas. He might have believed, what 
many excellent critics have believed, that in this age 
comedy requires more genius than tragedy ; and with his 
audience he might have infinitely more esteemed his own 
original humour, than Johnson's rhetorical declamation. 



SELF-CHARACTERS. 385 

He might have thought, that with inferior literature he 
displayed superior genius, and with less profundity more 
gaiety. He might have considered that the facility and 
vivacity of his pleasing compositions were preferable to 
that art, that habitual pomp, and that ostentatious elo- 
quence, which prevail in the operose labours of Johnson. 
No one might be more sensible than himself, that he, ac- 
cording to the happy expression of Johnson (when his 
rival was in his grave), "tetigit et ornavit." Gold- 
smith, therefore, without any singular vanity, might have 
concluded, from his own reasonings, that he was not an 
inferior writer to Johnson : all this not having been con- 
sidered, he has come down to posterity as the vainest and 
the most jealous of writers ; he whose dispositions were 
the most inoffensive, whose benevolence was the most 
extensive, and whose amiableness of heart has been con- 
cealed by its artlessness, and passed over in the sarcasms 
and sneers of a more eloquent rival, and his submissive 
partisans. 



SELF-CHARACTERS. 

Theee are two species of minor biography which may 
be discriminated ; detailing our own life and portraying 
our own character. The writing our own life has been 
practised with various success ; it is a delicate operation, 
a stroke too much may destroy the effect of the whole. 
If once we detect an author deceiving or deceived, it is 
a livid spot which infects the entire body. To publish 
one's own life has sometimes been a poor artifice to bring 
obscurity into notice; it is the ebriety of vanity, and 
the delirium of egotism. When a great man leaves some 
memorial of his days, the grave consecrates the motive. 
There are certain things which relate to ourselves, which 
no one can know so well ; a great genius obliges posterity 
25 



38G LITERARY CHARACTER. 

when he records them. But they must be composed 
with calmness, with simplicity, and with sincerity; the 
biographic sketch of Hume, written by himself, is a 
model of Attic simplicity. The Life of Lord Herbert is 
a biographical curiosity. The Memoirs of Sir William 
Jones, of Priestley, and of Gibbon, offer us the daily life 
of the student ; and those of Colley Cibber are a fine 
picture of the self-painter. We have some other pieces 
of self-biography, precious to the philosopher.* 

The other species of minor biography, that of por- 
traying our own character, could only have been invented 
by the most refined and the vainest nation. The French 
long cherished this darling egotism ; and have a collec- 
tion of these self-portraits in two bulky volumes. The 
brilliant Flechier, and the refined St. Evremond, have 
framed and glazed their portraits. Every writer then 
considered his character as necessary as his preface. 
The fashion seems to have passed over to our country ; 
Farquhar has drawn his character in a letter to a lady ; 
and others of our writers have given us their own minia- 
tures. 

There was, as a book in my possession will testify, a 
certain verse-maker of the name of Cantenac, who, in 
1662, published in the city of Paris a volume, containing 
some thousands of verses, which were, as his countrymen 
express it, de sa fa$on, after his own way. He fell so 
suddenly into the darkest and deepest pit of oblivion, 
that not a trace of his memory would have remained, 
had he not condescended to give ample information of 
every particular relative to himself. He has acquainted 
us with his size, and tells us, " that it is rare to see a man 
smaller than himself. I have that in common w T ith all 
dwarfs, that if my head only were seen, I should be 

* One of the most interesting is that of Gififord, appended to his 
translation of Juvenal ; it is a most remarkable record of the strug- 
gles of its author in early life, told with candour and simplicity. — Ed. 



SELF-CHAEACTERS. 387 

thought a larsre man." This atom in creation then de- 
scribes his oval and full face; his fiery and eloquent eyes; 
his vermil lips ; his robust constitution, and his efferves- 
cent passions. He appears to have been a most petulant, 
honest, and diminutive being. 

The description of his intellect is the object of our curi- 
osity. "I am as ambitious as any person can be ; but I 
would not sacrifice my honour to my ambition. I am so 
sensible to contempt, that I bear a mortal and implacable 
hatred against those who contemn me, and I know I could 
never reconcile myself with them ; but I spare no attentions 
for those I love ; I would give them my fortune and my 
life. I sometimes lie ; but generally in affairs of gallantry, 
where I voluntarily confirm falsehoods by oaths, without 
reflection, for swearing with me is a habit. I am told 
that my mind is brilliant, and that I have a certain man- 
ner in turning a thought which is quite my own. I am 
agreeable in conversation, though I confess I am often 
troublesome ; for I maintain paradoxes to display my 
genius, which savour too much of scholastic subterfuges. 
I speak too often and too long ; and as I have some read- 
ing, and a copious memory, I am fond of showing what- 
ever I know. My judgment is not so solid as my wit is 
lively. I am often melancholy and unhappy; and this 
sombrous disposition proceeds from my numerous disap- 
pointments in life. My verse is preferred to my prose ; 
and it has been of some use to me in pleasing the fair 
sex; poetry is most adapted to persuade women; but 
otherwise it has been of no service to me, and has, I fear, 
rendered me unfit for many advantageous occupations, in 
which I might have drudged. The esteem of the fair 
has. however, charmed away my complaints. This good 
fortune has been obtained by me, at the cost of many 
cares, and an unsubdued patience ; for I am one of those 
who. in affairs of love, will suffer an entire year, to taste 
the pleasures of one clay." 



388 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

This character of Cantenac has some local features; 
for an English poet would hardly console himself with so 
much gaiety. The Frenchman's attachment to the ladies 
seems to be equivalent to the advantageous occupations 
he had lost. But as the miseries of a literary man, 
without conspicuous talents, are always the same at 
Paris as in London, there are some parts of this charac- 
ter of Cantenac which appear to describe them with 
truth. Cantenac was a man of honour ; as warm in his 
resentment as his gratitude; but deluded by literary 
vanity, he became a writer in prose and verse, and while 
he saw the prospects of life closing on him, probably 
considered that the age was unjust. A melancholy ex- 
ample for certain volatile and fervent spirits, who, by 
becoming authors, either submit their felicity to the ca- 
prices of others, or annihilate the obscure comforts of 
life, and, like him, having " been told that their mind is 
brilliant, and that they have a certain manner in turning 
a thought," become writers, and complain that they are 
" often melancholy, owing to their numerous disappoint- 
ments." Happy, however, if the obscure, yet too sen- 
sible writer, can suffer an entire year, for the enjoyment 
of a single day ! But for this, a man must have been 
born in France. 



ON READING. 

Writing is justly denominated an art ; I think that 
reading claims the same distinction. To adorn ideas 
with elegance is an act of the mind superior to that of 
receiving them ; but to receive them with a happy dis- 
crimination is the effect of a practised taste. 

Yet it will be found that taste alone is not sufficient to 
obtain the proper end of reading. Two persons of equal 
taste rise from the perusal of the same book with very 



ON READING. 389 

different notions : the one will have the ideas of the 
author at command, and find a new train of sentiment 
awakened ; while the other quits his author in a pleasing 
distraction, but of the pleasures of reading nothing re- 
mains but tumultuous sensations. 

To account for these different effects, we must have re- 
course to a logical distinction, which appears to reveal one 
of the great mysteries in the art of reading. Logicians 
distinguish between perceptions and ideas. Perception 
is that faculty of the mind which notices the simple im- 
pression of objects: but when these objects exist in the 
mind, and are there treasured and arranged as materials 
for reflection, then they are called ideas. A perception is 
like a transient sunbeam, which just shows the object, 
but leaves neither light nor warmth ; while an idea is 
like the fervid beam of noon, which throws a settled and 
powerful light. 

Many ingenious readers complain that their memory 
is defective, and their studies unfruitful. This defect 
arises from their indulging the facile pleasures of percep- 
tions, in preference to the laborious habit of forming 
them into ideas. Perceptions require only the sensibility 
of taste, and their pleasures are continuous, easy, and 
exquisite. Ideas are an art of combination, and an ex- 
ertion of the reasoning powers. Ideas are therefore 
labours ; and for those who will not labour, it is unjust 
to complain, if they come from the harvest with scarcel;* 
a sheaf in their hands. 

There are secrets in the art of reading which tend I 
facilitate its purposes, by assisting the memory, and aug- 
menting intellectual opulence. Some our own ingenuity 
must form, and perhaps every student has peculiar habits 
of study, as, in short-hand, almost every writer has a 
system of his own. 

It is an observation of the elder Pliny (who, having 
been a voluminous compiler, must have had great 



390 LITERARY CITARACTER. 

experience in the art of reading), that there was no book 
so bad but which contained something good. To read 
every book would, however, be fatal to the interest of 
most readers; but it is not always necessary, in the 
pursuits of learning, to read every book entire. Of 
many books it is sufficient to seize the plan, and to 
examine some of their portions. Of the little supple- 
ment at the close of a volume, few readers conceive the 
utility ; but some of the most eminent writers in Europe 
have been great adepts in the art of index reading. I, 
for my part, venerate the inventor of indexes; and I 
know not to whom to yield the preference, either to 
Hippocrates, who was the first great anatomiser of the 
human body, or to that unknown labourer in literature, 
who first laid open the nerves and arteries of a book. 
Watts advises the perusal of the prefaces and the index 
of a book, as they both give light on its contents. 

The ravenous appetite of Johnson for reading is 
expressed in a strong metaphor by Mrs. Knowles, who 
said, " he knows how to read better than any one ; he 
gets at the substance of a book directly: he tears out the 
heart of it." Gibbon has a new idea in the "Art of 
Reading ;" he says " we ought not to attend to the order 
of our books so much as of our thoughts. The perusal 
of a particular work gives birth perhaps to ideas uncon- 
nected with the subject it treats ; I pursue these ideas, 
and quit my proposed plan of reading." Thus in the 
midst of Homer he read Longinus ; a chapter of Longinus 
led to an epistle of Pliny ; and having finished Longinus, 
he followed the train of his ideas of the sublime and 
beautiful in the " Enquiry" of Burke, and concluded by 
comparing the ancient with the modern Longinus. 

There are some mechanical aids in reading which may 
prove of great utility, and form a kind of rejuvenescence 
of our early studies. Montaigne placed at the end of a 
book which he intended not to reperuse, the time he had 



ON READING. 391 

read it, with a concise decision on its merits; "that," 
says he, " it may thus represent to me the air and 
general idea I had conceived of the author, in reading 
the work." We have several of these annotations. Of 
Young the poet it is noticed, that whenever he came to a 
striking passage he folded the leaf; and that at his 
death, books have been found in his library which had long 
resisted the power of closing : a mode more easy than use- 
ful ; for after a length of time they must be again read to 
know why they were folded. This difficulty is obviated by 
those who note in a blank leaf the pages to be referred to, 
with a word of criticism. Nor let us consider these mi- 
nute directions as unworthy the most enlarged minds : by 
these petty exertions, at the most distant periods, may 
learning obtain its authorities, and fancy combine its ideas. 
Seneca, in sending some volumes to his friend Lucil- 
ius, accompanies them with notes of particular passages, 
" that," he observes, " you who only aim at the useful 
may be spared the trouble of examining them entire." I 
have seen books noted by Yoltaire with a word of 
censure or approbation on the page itself, which was his 
usual practice ; and these volumes are precious to every 
man of taste. Formey complained that the books he lent 
Yoltaire were returned always disfigured by his remarks ; 
but he was a writer of the old school.* 

A professional student should divide his readings into 
a uniform reading which is useful, and into a diversified 
reading which is pleasant. Guy Patin, an eminent 
physician and man of letters, had a just notion of this 
manner. He says, " I daily read Hippocrates, Galen, 
Fernel, and other illustrious masters of my profession ; 
this I call my profitable readings. I frequently read 
Ovid, Juvenal, Horace, Seneca, Tacitus, and others, and 

* The account of Oldys and his manuscripts, in the third volume of 
the " Curiosities of Literature," will furnish abundant proof of the 
value of such disfigurations when the work of certain hands. — Ed. 



392 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

these are my recreations." We must observe these 
distinctions ; for it frequently happens that a lawyer or a 
physician, with great industry and love of study, by 
giving too much into his diversified readings, may 
utterly neglect what should be his uniform studies. 

A reader is too often a prisoner attached to the trium- 
phal car of an author of great celebrity; and when he 
ventures not to judge for himself, conceives, while he is 
reading the indifferent works of great authors, that the 
languor which he experiences arises from his own 
defective taste. But the best writers, when they are 
voluminous, have a great deal of mediocrity. 

On the other side, readers must not imagine that all 
the pleasures of composition depend on the author, for 
there is something which a reader himself must bring to 
the book that the book may please. There is a literary 
appetite, which the author can no more impart than the 
most skilful cook can give an appetency to the guests. 
When Cardinal Richelieu said to Godeau, that he did not 
understand his verses, the honest poet replied that it was 
not his fault. The temporary tone of the mind may be 
unfavourable to taste a work properly, and we have had 
many erroneous criticisms from great men, which may 
often be attributed to this circumstance. The mind 
communicates its infirm dispositions to the book, and an 
author has not only his own defects to account for, but 
also those of his reader. There is something in compo- 
sition like the game of shuttlecock, where if the reader 
do not quickly rebound the feathered cock to the author, 
the game is destroyed, and the whole spirit of the work 
falls extinct. 

A frequent impediment in reading is a disinclination 
in the mind to settle on the subject ; agitated by 
incongruous and dissimilar ideas, it is with pain that we 
admit those of the author. But on applying ourselves 
with a gentle violence to the perusal of an interesting 



ON READING. 393 

work, the mind soon assimilates to the subject; the 
ancient rabbins advised their young students to apply 
themselves to their readings, whether they felt an 
inclination or not, because, as they proceeded, they 
would find their disposition restored and their curiosity 
awakened. 

Readers may be classed into an infinite number of divi- 
sions; but an author is a solitary being, who, for the 
same reason he pleases one, must consequently displease 
another. To have too exalted a genius is more prejudi- 
cial to his celebrity than to have a moderate one ; for we 
shall find that the most popular works are not the most 
profound, but such as instruct those who require instruc- 
tion, and charm those who are not too learned to taste 
their no veliy. Lucilius, the satirist, said, that he did not 
write for Persius, for Scipio, and for Rutilius, persons 
eminent for their science, but for the Tarentines, the 
Consentines, and the Sicilians. Montaigne has com- 
plained that he found his readers too learned, or too 
ignorant, and that he could only please a middle class, 
who have just learning enough to comprehend him. Con- 
greve says, "there is in true beauty something which 
vulgar souls cannot admire." Balzac complains bitterly 
of readers, — " A period," he cries, " shall have cost us 
the labour of a day; we shall have distilled into an 
essay the essence of our mind; it may be a finished piece 
of art ; and they think they are indulgent when they 
pronounce it to contain some pretty things, and that the 
style is not bad !" There is something in exquisite com- 
position which ordinary readers can never understand. 

Authors are vain, but readers are capricious. Some 
will only read old books, as if there were no valuable 
truths to be discovered in modern publications; while 
others will only read new books, as if some valuable 
truths are not among the old. Some will not read a 
book, because they are acquainted with the author ; by 



394: LITERARY CHARACTER. 

which the reader may be more injured than the author : 
others not only read the hook, hut would also read the 
man ; by which the most ingenious author may be injured 
by the most impertinent reader. 



ON HABITUATING OURSELVES TO AN INDI- 
VIDUAL PURSUIT. 

Two things in human life are at continual variance, 
and without escaping from the one we must be separated 
from the other ; and these are ennui and. pleasure. Ennui 
is an afflicting sensation, if we may thus express it, from 
a want of sensation ; and pleasure is greater pleasure 
according to the quantity of sensation. That sensation 
is received in proportion to the capacity of our organs ; 
and that practice, or, as it has been sometimes called, 
" educated feeling," enlarges this capacity, is evident in 
such familiar instances as those of the blind, who have a 
finer tact, and the jeweller, who has a finer sight, than 
other men who are not so deeply interested in refining 
their vision and their touch. Intense attention is, there- 
fore, a certain means of deriving more numerous pleasures 
from its object. 

Hence it is that the poet, long employed on a poem, 
has received a quantity of pleasure which no reader can 
ever feel. In the progress of any particular pursuit, 
there are a hundred fugitive sensations which are too 
intellectual to be embodied into language. Every artist 
knows that between the thought that first gave rise to 
his design, and each one which appears in it, there are 
innumerable intermediate evanescences of sensation which 
no man felt but himself. These pleasures are in number 
according to the intenseness of his faculties and the 
quantity of his labour. 

It is so in any particular pursuit, from the manufactur- 



HABITUATING OURSELVES, ETC. 395 

ing of pins to the construction of philosophical systems. 
Every individual can exert that quantity of mind neces- 
sary to his wants and adapted to his situation; the 
quality of pleasure is nothing in the present question : 
for I think that we are mistaken concerning the grada- 
tions of human felicity. It does at first appear, that an 
astronomer rapt in abstraction, while he gazes on a star, 
must feel a more exquisite delight than a farmer who is 
conducting his team ; or a poet experience a higher grati- 
fication in modulating verses than a trader in arranging 
sums. But the happiness of the ploughman and the 
trader may be as satisfactory as that of the astronomer 
and the poet. Our mind can only be conversant with 
those sensations which surround us, and possessing the 
skill of managing them, we can form an artificial felicity ; 
it is certain that what the soul does not feel, no more 
affects it than what the eye does not see. It is thus that 
the trader, habituated to humble pursuits, can never be 
unhappy because he is not the general of an army ; for 
this idea of felicity he has never received. The philoso- 
pher who gives his entire years to the elevated pursuits 
of mind, is never unhappy because he is not in posses- 
sion of an Indian opulence, for the idea of accumulating 
this exotic splendour has never entered the range of his 
combinations. Nature, an impartial mother, renders 
felicity as perfect in the school-boy who scourges his top, 
as in the astronomer who regulates his star. The thing 
contained can only be equal to the container ; a full glass 
is as full as a full bottle ; and a human soul may be as 
much satisfied in the lowest of human beings as in the 
highest. 

In the progress of an individual pursuit, what philoso- 
phers call the associating or suggesting idea is ever 
busied, and in its beautiful effects genius is most deeply 
concerned ; for besides those trains of thought the great 
artist falls into during his actual composition, a distinct 



396 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

habit accompanies real genius through life in the activity 
of his associating idea, when not at his work ; it is at all 
times pressing and conducting his spontaneous thoughts, 
and every object which suggests them, however ap- 
parently trivial or unconnected towards itself, making 
what it wills its own, while instinctively it seems in- 
attentive to whatever has no tendency to its own pur- 
poses. 

Many peculiar advantages attend the cultivation of 
one master passion or occupation. In superior minds it 
is a sovereign that exiles others, and in inferior minds 
it enfeebles pernicious propensities. It may render us 
useful to our fellow-citizens, and it imparts the most per- 
fect independence to ourselves. It is observed by a great 
mathematician, that a geometrician would not be unhappy 
in a desert. 

This unity of design, with a centripetal force, draws 
all the rays of our existence ; and often, when accident 
has turned the mind firmly to one object, it has been 
discovered that its occupation is another name for hap- 
piness ; for it is a mean of escaping from incongruous 
sensations. It secures us from the dark vacuity of soul, 
as well as from the whirlwind of ideas ; reason itself is a 
passion, but a passion full of serenity. 

It is, however, observable of those who have devoted 
themselves to an individual object, that its importance is 
incredibly enlarged to their sensations. Intense atten- 
tion magnifies like a microscope ; but it is possible to 
apologise for their apparent extravagance from the con- 
sideration, that they really observe combinations not 
perceived by others of inferior application. That this 
passion has been carried to a curious violence of affec- 
tion, literary history affords numerous instances. In 
reading Dr. Burney's " Musical Travels," it would seem 
that music was the prime object of human life; Richard- 
son, the painter, in his treatise on his beloved art, closes 



ON NOVELTY IN LITERATURE. 397 

all by affirming, that, " Raphael is not only equal, but 
superior to a Virgil, or a IAvy, or a Thitcydides, or a 
Homer!" and that painting can reform our manners, 
increase our opulence, honour, and power. Denina, in 
his " Revolutions of Literature," tells us that to excel in 
historical composition requires more ability than is exer- 
cised by the excelling masters of any other art ; because 
it requires not only the same erudition, genius, imagina- 
tion, and taste, necessary for a poet, a painter, or a phi- 
losopher, but the historian must also have some peculiar 
qualifications; this served as a prelude to his own his- 
tory.* Helvetius, an enthusiast in the fine arts and polite 
literature, has composed a poem on Happiness ; and 
imagines that it consists in an exclusive love of the 
cultivation of letters and the arts. All this shows that 
the more intensely we attach ourselves to an individual 
object, the more numerous and the more perfect are our 
sensations; if we yield to the distracting variety of 
opposite pursuits with an equal passion, our soul is placed 
amid a continual shock of ideas, and happiness is lost by 
mistakes. 



ON NOVELTY IN LITERATURE. 

" All is said," exclaims the lively La Bruyere ; but at 
the same moment, by his own admirable Reflections, 
confutes the dreary system he would establish. An 
opinion of the exhausted state of literature has been a 
popular prejudice of remote existence ; and an unhappy 
idea of a wise ancient, who, even in his day, lamented 

* One of the most amusing modern instances occurs in the Preface 
to the late Peter Buchan's annotated edition of " Ancient Ballads and 
Songs of the North of Scotland" (2 vols. 8vo, Edin. 1828), in which 
he declares — "No one has yet conceived, nor has it entered the mind 
of man, what patience, perseverance, and general knowledge are neces- 
sary for an editor of a Collection of Ancient Ballads." — Ed. 



398 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

that " of books there Lb no end," has been transcribed in 
many books, lie who has critically examined any branch 
of literature, has discovered how little of original inven- 
tion is to be found even in the most excellent works. To 
add a little to his predecessors satisfies the ambition of 
the first geniuses. The popular notion of literary nov- 
elty is an idea more fanciful than exact. Many are yet 
to learn that our admired originals are not such as th.*y 
mistake them to be ; that the plans of the most original 
performances have been borrowed ; and that the thoughts 
of the most admired compositions are not wonderful dis- 
coveries, but only truths, which the ingenuity of the 
author, by arranging the intermediate and accessary 
ideas, has unfolded from that confused sentiment, which 
those experience who are not accustomed to think with 
depth, or to discriminate with accuracy. This Novelty 
in Literature is, as Pope defines it, 

What oft was thought, but ne'er so well express'd. 

Novelty, in its rigid acceptation, will not be found in any 
judicious production. 

Voltaire looked on everything as imitation. He ob- 
serves that the most original writers borrowed one from 
another, and says that the instruction we gather from 
books is like fire — we fetch it from our neighbours, kindle 
it at home, and communicate it to others, till it becomes 
the property of all. He traces some of the finest com- 
positions to the fountain-head ; and the reader smiles 
when he perceives that they have travelled in regular 
succession through China, India, Arabia, and Greece, to 
France and to England. 

To the obscurity of time are the ancients indebted 
for that originality in which they are imagined to excel, 
but we know how frequently they accuse each other ; and 
to have borrowed copiously from preceding writers was 
not considered criminal by such illustrious authors as 



ON NOVELTY IN LITERATURE 399 

Plato and Cicero. The iEneid of Virgil displays little 
invention in the incidents, for it unites the plan of the 
Iliad and the Odyssey. 

Our own early writers have not more originality than 
modern genius may aspire to reach. To imitate and to 
rival the Italians and the French formed their devotion. 
Chaucer, Gower, and Gawin Douglas, were all spirited 
imitators, and frequently only masterly translators. 
Spenser, the father of so many poets, is himself the child 
of the Ausonian Muse. Milton is incessantly borrowing 
from the poetry of his day. In the beautiful Masque of 
Comus he preserved all the circumstances of the work he 
imitated. Tasso opened for him the Tartarean Gulf; the 
sublime description of the bridge may be found in Sadi, 
who borrowed it from the Turkish theology ; the para- 
dise of fools is a wild flower, transplanted from the wil- 
derness of Ariosto. The rich poetry of Gray is a won- 
derful tissue, woven on the frames, and composed with 
the gold threads, of others. To Cervantes we owe But- 
ler ; and the united abilities of three great wits, in their 
Martinus Scriblerus, could find no other mode of con- 
veying their powers but by imitating at once Don 
Quixote and Monsieur Oufle. Pope, like Boileau, had all 
the ancients and moderns in his pay ; the contributions 
he levied were not the pillages of a bandit, but the taxes 
of a monarch. Swift is much indebted for the plans of 
his two very original performances : he owes the " Trav- 
els of Gulliver" to the "Voyages of Cyrano de Bergerac 
to the Sun and Moon ;" a writer, who, without the acute- 
ness of Swift, has wilder flashes of fancy ; Joseph War- 
ton has observed many of Swift's strokes in Bishop 
Godwin's " Man in the Moon," who, in his turn, must have 
borrowed his work from Cyrano. " The Tale of a Tub " 
is an imitation of such various originals, that they are too 
numerous here to mention. Wotton observed, justly, 
that in many places the author's wit is not his own. 



400 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

Dr. Ferriar's " Essay on the Imitations of Sterne" might 
be considerably augmented. Such are the writers, how- 
ever, who imitate, but remain inimitable ! 

Montaigne, with honest naivete, compares his writings 
to a thread that binds the flowers of others ; and that, by 
incessantly pouring the waters of a few good old authors 
into his sieve, some drops fall upon his paper. The good 
old man elsewhere acquaints us with a certain stratagem 
of his own invention, consisting of his inserting whole 
sentences from the ancients, without acknowledgment, 
that the critics might blunder, by giving nazardes to 
Seneca and Plutarch, while they imagined they tweaked 
his nose. Petrarch, who is not the inventor of that ten- 
der poetry of which he is the model, and Boccaccio, called 
the father of Italian novelists, have alike profited by a 
studious perusal of writers, who are now only read by 
those who have more curiosity than taste. Boiardo has 
imitated Pulci, and Ariosto, Boiardo. The madness of 
Orlando Furioso, though it wears, by its extravagance, a 
very original air, is only imitated from Sir Launcelot in 
the old romance of " Morte Arthur," with which, Warton 
observes, it agrees in every leading circumstance ; and 
what is the Cardenio of Cervantes but the Orlando of 
Ariosto ? Tasso has imitated the Iliad, and enriched his 
poem with episodes from the jEneid. It is curious to 
observe that even Dante, wild and original as he appears, 
when he meets Virgil in the Inferno, warmly expresses 
his gratitude for the many fine passages for which he was 
indebted to his works, and on which he says he had " long 
meditated." Moliere and La Fontaine are considered to 
possess as much originality as any of the French writers ; 
yet the learned Menage calls Moliere " un grand et habile 
picoreur ;" and Boileau tells us that La Fontaine bor- 
rowed his style and matter from Marot and Rabelais, and 
took his subjects from Boccaccio, Poggius, and Ariosto. 
Nor was the eccentric Rabelais the inventor of most of 



VEKS DE SOCIETB. 401 

his burlesque narratives ; and he is a very close imitator 
of Folengo, the inventor of the macaronic poetry, and 
not a little indebted to the old Fa'cezie of the Italians. 
Indeed Marot, Villon, as well as those we have noticed, 
profited by the authors anterior to the age of Francis I. 
La Bruyere incorporates whole passages of Publius Syrus 
in his work, as the translator of the latter abundantly 
shows. To the " Turkish Spy" was Montesquieu be- 
holden for his " Persian Letters," and a numerous crowd 
are indebted to Montesquieu. Corneille made a liberal 
use of Spanish literature ; and the pure waters of Racine 
flowed from the fountains of Sophocles and Euripides. • 

This vein of imitation runs through the productions of 
our greatest authors. Vigneul de Marville compares 
some of the first writers to bankers who are rich with 
the assembled fortunes of individuals, and would be often 
ruined were they too hardly drawn on. 



VERS DE SOClfiT^. 

Pltntt, in an epistle to Tuscus, advises him to intermix 
among his severer studies the softening charms of poetry ; 
and notices- a species of poetical composition which merits 
critical animadversion. I shall quote Pliny in the lan- 
guage of his elegant translator. He says, " These pieces 
commonly go under the title of poetical amusements ; 
but these amusements have sometimes gained as much 
reputation to their authors as works of a more serious 
nature. It is surprising how much the mind is enter- 
tained and enlivened by these little poetical compositions, 
as they turn upon subjects of gallantry, satire, tender- 
ness, politeness, and everything, in short, that concerns 
life, and the affairs of the world." 

This species of poetry has been carried to its utmost 
26 



402 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

perfection by the French. It has been discriminated by 
them, from the mass of poetry, under the apt title of 
" Poesies legtres" and sometimes it has been significantly 
called " Vers de SocittV The French writers have 
formed a body of this fugitive poetry which no European 
nation can rival ; and to which both the lan^ua^e and 
genius appear to be greatly favourable. 

The " Poesies legbres" are not merely compositions of a 
light and gay turn, but are equally employed as a vehicle 
for tender and pathetic sentiment. They are never long, 
for they are consecrated to the amusement of society. 
The author appears to have composed them for his pleas- 
ure, not for his glory ; and he charms his readers, because 
he seems careless of their approbation. 

Every delicacy of sentiment must find its delicacy of 
expression, and every tenderness of thought must be 
softened by the tenderest tones. Nothing trite or trivial 
must enfeeble and chill the imagination ; nor must the 
ear be denied its gratification by a rough or careless 
verse. In these works nothing is pardoned ; a word 
may disturb, a line may destroy the charm. 

The passions of the poet may form the subjects of his 
verse. It is in these writings he delineates himself; he 
reflects his tastes, his desires, his humours, his amours, 
and even his defects. In other poems the poet disappears 
under the feigned character he assumes ; here alone he 
speaks, here he acts. He makes a confidant of the reader, 
interests him in his hopes and his sorrows ; we admire 
the poet, and conclude with esteeming the man. The 
poem is the complaint of a lover, or a compliment to a 
patron, a vow of friendship, or a hymn of gratitude. 

These poems have often, with great success, displayed 
pictures of manners ; for here the poet colours the ob- 
jects with all the hues of social life. Reflection must 
not be amplified, for these are pieces devoted to the 
fancy ; a scene may be painted throughout the poem ; a 



VERS DE SOCIETE. 403 

sentiment must be conveyed in a verse. In the " Grongar 
Hill" of Dyer we discover some strokes which may serve 
to exemplify this criticism. The poet, contemplating the 
distant landscape, observes — 

A step methinks may pass the stream, 
So little distant dangers seem ; 
So we mistake the future's face, 
Eyed through Hope's deluding glass. 

It must not be, supposed that, because these poems are 
concise, they are of easy production; a poet's genius 
may not be diminutive because his pieces are so ; nor 
must we call them, as a fine sonnet has been called, a diffi- 
cult trifle. A circle may be very small, yet it may be as 
mathematically beautiful and perfect as a larger one. 
To such compositions we may apply the observation of 
an ancient critic, that though a little thing gives perfec- 
tion, yet perfection is not a little thing. 

The poet must be alike polished by an intercourse 
with the world as with the studies' of taste; one to 
whom labour is negligence, refinement a science, and art 
a nature. 

Genius will not always be sufficient to impart that 
grace of amenity. Many of the French nobility, who 
cultivated poetry, have therefore oftener excelled in 
these poetical amusements than more professed poets. 
France once delighted in the amiable and ennobled 
names of Mvernois, Boufflers, and St. Aignan ; they have 
not been considered as unworthy rivals of Chaulieu and 
Bernard, of Voltaire and Gresset. 

All the minor odes of Horace, and the entire Anac- 
reon, are compositions of this kind ; effusions of the 
heart, and pictures of the imagination, which were pro- 
duced in the convivial, the amatory, and the pensive 
hour. Our nation has not always been successful in 
these performances ; they have not been kindred to its 
genius. With Charles II. something of a gayer and 



404 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

more airy taste was communicated to our poetry, but it 
was desultory and incorrect. Waller, both by his habits 
and his genius, was well adapted to excel in this lighter 
poetry ; and he has often attained the perfection which 
the state of the language then permitted. Prior has a 
variety of sallies; but his humour is sometimes gross, 
and his versification is sometimes embarrassed. He knew 
the value of these charming pieces, and he had drunk of 
this Burgundy in the vineyard itself. He has some trans- 
lations, and some plagiarisms ; but some of his verses to 
Chloe are eminently airy and pleasing. A diligent selec- 
tion from our fugitive poetry might perhaps present us 
with many of these minor poems ; but the " Vers de 
Societe" form a species of poetical composition which 
may still be employed with great success. 



THE GENIUS OF MOLIERE. 

The genius of comedy not only changes with the age, 
but appears different among different people. Manners 
and customs not only vary among European nations, but 
are alike mutable from one age to another, even in the 
same people. These vicissitudes are often fatal to comic 
writers ; our old school of comedy has been swept off 
the stage : and our present uniformity of manners has 
deprived our modern writers of those rich sources of 
invention when persons living more isolated, society was 
less monotonous ; and Jonson and Shadwell gave us 
what they called " the humours" — that is, the individual 
or particular characteristics of men.* 

* Aubrey lias noted this habit of our two greatest dramatists, when 
speaking of Shakspeare he says — " The humour of the constable in A 
Midsummer Night's Bream, he happend to take at G-rendon in Bucks ; 
which is the roade from London to Stratford ; and there was living 
that constable in 1642, when I first came to Oxon. Ben Jonson and 



THE GENIUS OF MOLIERE. 4Q5 

But however taste and modes of thinking may be 
inconstant, and customs and manners alter, at bottom 
the groundwork is Nature's, in every production of 
comic genius. A creative genius, guided by an uner- 
ring instinct, though he draws after the contemporary 
models of society, will retain his pre-eminence beyond 
his own age and his own nation ; what was temporary 
and local disappears, but what appertains to universal 
nature endures. The scholar dwells on the grotesque 
pleasantries of the sarcastic Aristophanes, though the 
Athenian manners, and his exotic personages, have long 
vanished. 

Moliere was a creator in the art of comedy ; and al- 
though his personages were the contemporaries of Louis 
the Fourteenth, and his manners, in the critical accepta- 
tion of the term, local and temporary, yet his admirable 
genius opened that secret path of Nature, which is so 
rarely found among the great names of the most literary 
nations. Cervantes remains single in Spain ; in England 
Shakspeare is a eonsecrated name ; and centuries may 
pass away before the French people shall witness another 
Moliere. 

The history of this comic poet is the tale of powerful 
genius creating itself amidst the most adverse elements. 
We have the progress of that self-education which struck 
out an untried path of its own, from the time Moliere 
had not yet acquired his art to the glorious days when 

he did gather humours of men dayly, wherever they came." Shadwell, 
whose best plays were produced in the reign of Charles II., was a pro- 
fessed imitator of the style of Jonson ; and so closely described the 
manners of his day that he was frequently accused of direct personali- 
ties, and obliged to alter one of his plays, The Humorists, to avoid an 
outcry raised against him. Sir Walter Scott has recorded, in the Pre- 
face to his "Fortunes of Nigel," the obligation he was under to Shad- 
well's comedy, The Squire of Alsatia, for the vivid description it ena- 
bled him to give of the lawless denizens of the old Sanctuary of White- 
friars. — Ed. 



40 G LITERARY CHARACTER. 

he gave his country a Plautus in his farce, a Terence in his 
composition, and a Menander in his moral truths. But 
the difficulties overcome, and the disappointments incur- 
red, his modesty and his confidence, and, what was not 
less extraordinary, his own domestic life in perpetual 
conflict with his character, open a more strange career, 
in some respects, than has happened to most others of 
the high order of his genius. 

It was long the fate of Moliere to experience that rest- 
less importunity of genius which feeds on itself, till it 
discovers the pabulum it seeks. Moliere not only suf- 
fered that tormenting impulse, but it was accompanied 
by the unhappiness of a mistaken direction. And this 
has been the lot of some who for many years have thus 
been lost to themselves and to the public. 

A man born among the obscure class of the people, 
thrown among the itinerant companies of actors — for 
France had not yet a theatre — occupied to his last hours 
by too devoted a management of his own dramatic corps ; 
himself, too, an original actor in the characters by him- 
self created ; with no better models of composition than 
the Italian farces alV improvista, and whose fantastic gaiety 
he, to the last, loved too well ; becomes the personal fa- 
vourite of the most magnificent monarch, and the intimate 
of the most refined circles. Thoughtful observer of these 
new scenes and new personages, he sports with the affected 
precieuses and the flattering marquises as with the naive 
ridiculousness of the bourgeois, and the wild pride and 
egotism of the parvenus ; and with more profound de- 
signs and a hardier hand unmasks the impostures of false 
pretenders in all professions. His scenes, such was their 
verity, seem but the reflections of his reminiscences. 
His fertile facility when touching on transient follies ; his 
wide comprehension, and his moralising vein, in his more 
elevated comedy, display, in this painter of man, the 
poet and the philosopher, and, above all, the great moral 



THE GENIUS OF MOLIERE. 407 

satirist. Moliere has shown that the most successful 
reformer of the manners of a people is a great comic 
poet. 

The youth Pocquelin — this was his family name — was 
designed by the tapissier, his father, to be the heir of the 
hereditary honours of an ancient standing, which had 
maintained the Pocquelins through four or five genera- 
tions by the articles of a furnishing upholsterer. His 
grandfather was a haunter of the small theatres of that 
day, and the boy often accompanied this venerable critic 
of the family to his favourite recreations. The actors 
were usually more excellent than their pieces ; some had 
carried the mimetic art to the perfection of eloquent ges- 
ticulation. In these loose scenes of inartificial and bur- 
lesque pieces was the genius of Moliere cradled and 
nursed. The changeful scenes of the Theatre de JBour- 
gogne deeply busied the boy's imagination, to the great 
detriment of the tapisserie of all the Pocquelins. 

The father groaned, the grandfather clapped, the boy 
remonstrated till, at fourteen years of age, he was con- 
signed, as " un mauvais sujet " (so his father qualified 
him), to a college of the Jesuits at Paris, where the au- 
thor of the " Tartuffe " passed five years, studying — for 
the bar ! 

Philosophy and logic were waters which he deeply 
drank ; and sprinklings of his college studies often 
pointed the satire of his more finished comedies. To 
ridicule false learning and false taste one must be inti- 
mate with the true. 1 

On his return to the metropolis the old humour broke 
out at the representation of the inimitable Scaramouch 
of the Italian theatre. The irresistible passion drove 
him from his law studies, and cast young Pocquelin 
among a company of amateur actors, whose fame soon 
enabled them not to play gratuitously. Pocquelin was 
the manager and the modeller, for under his studious eye 



408 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

this company were induced to imitate Mature with the 
simplicity the poet himself wrote. 

The prejudices of the day, both civil and religious, had 
made these private theatres — no great national theatre 
yet existing — the resource only of the idler, the dissi- 
pated, and even of the unfortunate in society. The 
youthful adventurer affectionately offered a free admis- 
sion to the dear Pocquelins. They rejected their entrees 
with horror, and sent their genealogical tree, drawn 
afresh, to shame the truant who had wantoned into the 
luxuriance of genius. To save the honour of the paren- 
tal upholsterers Pocquelin concealed himself under the 
immortal name of Moliere. 

The future creator of French comedy had now passed 
his thirtieth year, and as yet his reputation was confined 
to his own dramatic corps — a pilgrim in the caravan of 
ambulatory comedy. He had provided several tempo- 
rary novelties. Boileau regretted the loss of one, Le 
Docteur Amoureux ; and in others we detect the abor- 
tive conceptions of some of his future pieces. The severe 
judgment of Moliere suffered his skeletons to perish ; 
but, when he had discovered the art of comic writing, 
with equal discernment he resuscitated them. 

Not only had Moliere not yet discovered the true bent 
of his genius, but, still more unfortunate, he had as 
greatly mistaken it as when he proposed turning avocat, 
for he imagined that his most suitable character was 
tragic. He wrote a tragedy, and he acted in a tragedy; 
the tragedy he composed was condemned at Bordeaux ; 
the mortified poet flew to Grenoble ; still the unlucky 
tragedy haunted his fancy ; he looked on it with paternal 
eyes, in which there were tears. Long after, when Ra- 
cine, a youth, offered him a very unactable tragedy,* 

* The tragedy written by Racine was called Theagene et Chariclee, 
and founded on the tale by Heliodorus. It was the first attempt of 
its aulbor, and submitted by him to Moliere, while director of the 



THE GENIUS OF MOLIERE. 409 

Moliere presented him with his own : — " Take this, for I 
am convinced that the subject is highly tragic, notwith- 
standing my failure." The great dramatic poet of 
France opened his career by recomposing the condemned 
tragedy of the comic wit in La Thebaide. In the illu- 
sion that he was a great tragic actor, deceived by his 
own susceptibility, though his voice denied the tones of 
passion, he acted in one of Corneille's tragedies, and 
quite allayed the alarm of a rival company on the an- 
nouncement. It was not, however, so when the author- 
actor vivified one of his own native personages ; then, 
inimitably comic, every new representation seemed to be 
a new creation. 

It is a remarkable feature, though not perhaps a sin- 
gular one, in the character of this great comic writer, 
that he was one of the most serious of men, and even of a 
melancholic temperament. One of his lampooners wrote 
a satirical comedy on the comic poet, where he figures as 
" Moliere hypochondre." Boileau, who knew him inti- 
mately, happily characterised Moliere as le Contempla- 
teur. This deep pensiveness is revealed in his physiog- 
nomy. 

The genius of Moliere, long undiscovered by himself, 
in its first attempts in a higher walk did not move alone; 
it was crutched by imitation, and it often deigned to 
plough with another's heifer. He copied whole scenes 
from Italian comedies and plots from Italian novelists : 
his sole merit was their improvement. The great comic 
satirist, who hereafter was to people the stage with a 
dramatic crowd who were to live on to posterity, had 
not yet struck at that secret vein of originality — the 
fairy treasure which one day was to cast out such a 

Theatre of the Palais Royal ; the latter had no favourable impression 
of its success if produced, but suggested La Thebaide as a subject for 
his genius, and advanced the young poet 100 louis while engaged 
on his work, which was successfully produced in 1664. — Ed. 



410 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

prodigality of invention. His two first comedies, 
IjJEtourdi and Le Dtpit Amoureux, which he had only 
ventured to bring out in a provincial theatre, were 
grafted on Italian and Spanish comedy. Nothing more 
original offered to his imagination than the Roman, the 
Italian, and the Spanish drama ; the cunning adroit 
slave of Terence ; the tricking, bustling Gracioso of 
modern Spain ; old fathers, the dupes of some scape- 
grace, or of their own senile follies, with lovers sighing 
at cross-purposes. The germ of his future powers may, 
indeed, be discovered in these two comedies, for insensi- 
bly to himself he had fallen into some scenes of natural 
simplicity. In UEtourdi, Mascarille, " le roi des servi- 
teurs," which Moliere himself admirably personated, is 
one of those defunct characters of the Italian comedy no 
longer existing in society ; yet, like our Touchstone, but 
infinitely richer, this new ideal personage still delights 
by the fertility of his expedients and his perpetual and 
vigorous gaiety. In Le Depit Amoureux is the exquis- 
ite scene of the quarrel and reconciliation of the lovers. 
In this fine scene, though perhaps but an amplification 
of the well-known ode of Horace, Donee gratus eram tibi f 
Moliere consulted his own feelings, and betrayed his 
future genius. 

It was after an interval of three or four years that the 
provincial celebrity of these comedies obtained a repre- 
sentation at Paris ; their success was decisive. This was 
an evidence of public favour which did not accompany 
Moliere's more finished productions, which were so far 
unfortunate that they were more intelligible to the few ; 
in fact, the first comedies of Moliere were not written 
above the popular taste ; the spirit of true comedy, in a 
profound knowledge of the heart of man, and in the deli- 
cate discriminations of individual character, was yet un- 
known. Moliere was satisfied to excel his predecessors, 
but he had not yet learned his art. 



THE GEETIUS OF HOLIERE. 411 

The rising poet was now earnestly sought after ; a 
more extended circle of society now engaged his contem- 
plative habits. He looked around on living scenes no 
longer through the dim spectacles of the old comedy, and 
he projected a new species, which was no longer to de- 
pend on its conventional grotesque personages and its 
forced incidents ; he aspired to _ please a more critical 
audience by making his dialogue the conversation of so- 
ciety, and his characters its portraits. 

Introduced to the literary coterie of the Hotel de Ram- 
bouillet, a new view opened on the favoured poet. To 
occupy a seat in this envied circle was a distinction in 
society. The professed object of this reunion of nobility 
and literary persons, at the hotel of the Marchioness of 
Rambouillet, was to give a higher tone to all France, by 
the cultivation of the language, the intellectual refine- 
ment of their compositions, and last, but not least, to 
inculcate the extremest delicacy of manners. The recent 
civil dissensions had often violated the urbanity of the 
court, and a grossness prevailed in conversation which 
offended the scrupulous. This critical circle was composed 
of both sexes. They were to be the arbiters of taste, 
the legislators of criticism, and, what was less tolerable, 
the models of genius. No work was to be stamped into 
currency which bore not the mint-mark of the hotel. 

In the annals of fashion and literature no coterie has 
presented a more instructive and amusing exhibition of 
the abuses of learning, and the aberrations of ill-regulated 
imaginations, than the Hotel de Rambouillet, by its in- 
genious absurdities. Their excellent design to refine the 
language, the manners, and even morality itself, branched 
out into every species of false refinement ; their science 
ran into trivial pedantries, their style into a fantastic 
jargon, and their spiritualising delicacy into the very 
puritanism of prudery. Their frivolous distinction be- 
tween the mind and the heart, which could not always 



412 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

be made to go together, often perplexed them as much 
as their own jargon, which was not always intelligible, 
even to the initiated. The French Academy is said to 
have originated in the first meetings of the Hotel de 
Rambouillet ; and it is probable that some sense and 
taste, in its earliest days, may have visited this society, 
for we do not begin such refined follies without some 
show of reason. 

The local genius of the hotel was feminine, though the 
most glorious men of the literature of France were among 
its votaries. The great magnet was the famed Mademoi- 
selle Scudery, whose voluminous romances were their 
code ; and it is supposed these tomes preserve some of 
their lengthened conversaziones. In the novel system of 
gallantry of this great inventor of amorous and metaphy- 
sical " twaddle," the ladies were to be approached as 
beings nothing short of celestial paragons ; they were 
addressed in a language not to be found in any dictionary 
but their own, and their habits were more fantastic than 
their language : a sort of domestic chivalry formed their 
etiquette. Their baptismal names were to them profane, 
and their assumed ones were drawn from the folio roman- 
ces — those Bibles of love. At length all ended in a sort 
of Freemasonry of gallantry, which had its graduated 
orders, and whoever was not admitted into the mysteries 
was not permitted to prolong his existence — that is, his 
residence among them. The apprenticeship of the craft 
was to be served under certain Introducers to Ruelles. 

Their card of invitation was either a rondeau or an 
enigma, which served as a subject to open conversation. 
The lady received her visitors reposing on that throne of 
beauty, a bed placed in an alcove ; the toilet was mag- 
nificently arranged. The space between the bed and the 
wall was called the Huette* the diminutive of la Rue / 

* In a portion of the ancient Louvre, still preserved amid the changes 
to which it has been subjected, is the old wainscoted bedroom of the 



THE GENIUS OF MOLIEEE. 413 

and in this narrow street, or " Fop's alley," walked the 
favoured. But the chevalier who was graced by the 
honorary title of PAlcoviste, was at once master of the 
household and master of the ceremonies. His character 
is pointedly defined by St. Evremond, as " a lover whom 
the Prtcieuse is to love without enjoyment, and to enjoy 
in good earnest her husband with aversion." The scene 
offered no indecency to such delicate minds, and much 
less the impassioned style which passed between les chores, 
as they called themselves. Whatever offered an idea, of 
what their jargon denominated chamelle, was treason 
and exile. Tears passed ere the hand of the elected 
maiden was kissed by its martyr. The celebrated Julia 
d'Angennes was beloved by the Duke de Montausier, but 
fourteen years elapsed ere she would yield a " yes." 
"When the faithful Julia was no longer blooming, the Al- 
coviste duke gratefully took up the remains of her 
beauty. 

Their more curious project was the reform of the style 
of conversation, to purify its grossness, and invent novel 
terms for familiar objects. Menage drew up a " Petition 
of the Dictionaries," which, by their severity of taste, 
had nearly become superannuated. They succeeded 
better with the marchandes des modes and the jewellers, 
furnishing a vocabulary excessively pr'eciense, by which 
people bought their old wares with new names. At 
length they were so successful in their neology, that with 
great difficulty they understood one another. It is, how- 
ever, worth observation, that the orthography invented 
by the pr'ecieuses — who, for their convenience, rejected all 
the redundant letters in words — was adopted, and is now 
used ; and their pride of exclusiveness in society intro- 
duced the singular term s'encanailler, to describe a 
person who haunted low company, while their morbid 

great Henry IY., -with the carved recess and the ruelle, as described 
above : it is a most interesting fragment of regal domestic life. — Ed. 



414 



LITERARY CHARACTER. 



purity had ever on their lips the word obscenite, terras 
which Moliere ridicules, but whose expressiveness has 
preserved them in the language. 

Ridiculous as some of these extravagances now appear 
to us, they had been so closely interwoven with the 
elegance of the higher ranks, and so intimately associated 
with genius and literature, that the veil of fashion con- 
secrated almost the mystical society, since we find among 
its admirers the most illustrious names of France. 

Into this elevated and artificial circle of society our 
youthful and unsophisticated poet was now thrown, with 
a mind not vitiated by any prepossessions of false taste, 
studious of nature and alive to the ridiculous. But how 
was the comic genius to strike at the follies of his illus- 
trious friends — to strike, but not to wound ? A provin- 
cial poet and actor to enter hostilely into the sacred 
precincts of these Exclusives ? Tormented by his genius 
Moliere produced Les Precieuses Ridicules', hut admirably 
parried, in his preface, any application to them, by aver- 
ring that it was aimed at their imitators — their spurious 
mimics in the country. The Precieuses Ridicules was 
acted in the presence of the assembled Hotel de Ram- 
bouillet with immense applause. A central voice from 
the pit, anticipating the host of enemies and the fame of 
the reformer of comedy, exclaimed, "Take courage, 
Moliere, this is true comedy." The learned Menage was 
the only member of the society who had the good sense 
to detect the drift ; he perceived the snake in the grass. 
" We must now," said this sensible pedant (in a remote 
allusion to the fate of idolatry and the introduction of 
Christianity) to the poetical pedant, Chapelain, "follow 
the counsel which St. Remi gave to Clovis — we must 
burn all that we adored, and adore what we have burned." 
The success of the comedy was universal ; the company 
doubled their prices; the country gentry flocked to 
witness the marvellous novelty, which far exposed that 



THE GENIUS OF MOLIERE. 4-15 

false taste, that romance-impertinence, and that sickly 
affectation which had long disturbed the quiet of families. 
Cervantes had not struck more adroitly at Spanish rodo- 
montade. 

At this universal reception of the JPrecieuses Ridicules, 
Moliere, it is said, exclaimed — " I need no longer study 
Plautus and Terence, nor poach in the fragments of 
Menander ; I have only to study the world." It may be 
doubtful whether the great comic satirist at that moment 
caught the sudden revelation of his genius, as he did 
subsequently in his Tartuffe, his Misanthrope, his Bour- 
geois Gentilhomme, and others. The JPrecieuses Ridi- 
cules was the germ of his more elaborate Femmes Sav an- 
tes, which was not produced till after an interval of twelve 
years. 

Moliere returned to his old favourite canevas, or plots 
of Italian farces and novels, and Spanish comedies, which, 
being always at hand, furnished comedies of intrigue. 
JOJEcole des Maris is an inimitable model of this class. 

But comedies which derive their chief interest from 
the ingenious mechanism of their plots, however poignant 
the delight of the artifice of the denouement, are some- 
what like an epigram, once known, the brilliant point is 
blunted by repetition. This is not the fate of those 
representations of men's actions, passions, and manners, 
in the more enlarged sphere of human nature, where an 
eternal interest is excited, and will charm on the tenth 
repetition. 

No ! Moliere had not yet discovered his true genius ; 
he was not yet emancipated from his old seductions. A 
rival company was reputed to have the better actors for 
tragedy, and Moliere resolved to compose an heroic 
drama on the passion of jealousy — a favorite one on 
which he was incessantly ruminating. Don Garde de 
Navarre, ou Le Prince Jaloux, the hero personated by 
himself, terminated by the hisses of the audience. 



416 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

The fall of the Prince Jaloux was nearly fatal to the 
tender reputation of the poet and the actor. The world 
became critical: the marquises, and the precieuses, and 
recently the bourgeois, who were sore from Sganarelle, 
ou Le Cocu Imaginaire, were up in arms ; and the rival 
theatre maliciously raised the halloo, nattering them- 
selves that the comic genius of their dreaded rival would 
be extinguished by the ludicrous convulsed hiccough to 
which Moliere was liable in his tragic tones, but which 
he adroitly managed in his comic parts. 

But the genius of Moliere was not to be daunted by 
cabals, nor even injured by his own imprudence. Le 
Prince Jaloux was condemned in February, 1661, and 
the same year produced ISEcole des Maris and Les 
Fdcheux. The happy genius of the poet opened on his 
Zoiluses a series of dramatic triumphs. 

Foreign critics — Tiraboschi and Schlegel — have depre- 
ciated the Frenchman's invention, by insinuating that 
were all that Moliere borrowed taken from him, little 
would remain of his own. But they were not aware of 
his dramatic creation, even when he appropriated the 
slight inventions of others; they have not distinguished 
the eras of the genius of Moliere, and the distinct classes 
of his comedies. Moliere had the art of amalgamating 
many distinct inventions of others into a single inimit- 
able whole. Whatever might be the herbs and the 
reptiles thrown into the mystical caldron, the incantation 
of genius proved to be truly magical. 

Facility and fecundity may produce inequality, but, 
when a man of genius works, they are imbued with a 
raciness which the anxious diligence of inferior minds 
can never yield. Shakspeare, probably, poured forth 
many scenes in this spirit. The multiplicity of the 
pieces of Moliere, their different merits, and their distinct 
classes — all written within the space of twenty years — 
display, if any poet ever did, this wonder-working faculty. 



THE GENIUS OF MOLIERE. 417 

The truth is. that few of his comedies are finished works ; 
he never satisfied himself, even in his most applauded 
productions. Necessity bound him to furnish novelties 
for his theatre ; he rarely printed any work. Les 
JFdcheux, an admirable series of scenes, in three acts, 
and in verse, was " planned, written, rehearsed, and 
represented in a single fortnight." Many of his dramatic 
effusions were precipitated on the stage ; the humorous 
scenes of Monsieur de JPourceaugnac were thrown out to 
enliven a royal fete. 

This versatility and felicity of composition made every- 
thing with Moliere a subject for comedy. He invented 
two novelties, such as the stage had never before wit- 
nessed. Instead of a grave defence from the malice of 
his critics, and the flying gossip of the court circle, 
Moliere found out the art of congregating the public to 
The Quarrels of Authors. He dramatised his critics. 
In a comedy without a plot, and in scenes which seemed 
rather spoken than written, and with characters more 
real than personated, he displayed his genius by collect- 
ing whatever had been alleged to depreciate it ; and La 
Critique de VEcole des Femmes is still a delightful pro- 
duction. This singular drama resembles the sketch- 
book of an artist, the croquis of portraits — the loose 
hints of thoughts, many of which we discover were more 
fully delineated in his subsequent pieces. With the 
same rapid conception he laid hold of his embarrass- 
ments to furnish dramatic novelties as expeditiously as 
the king required. Louis XIV. was himself no indif- 
ferent critic, and more than once suggested an incident 
or a character to his favourite poet. In I? Impromptu de 
Versaills*, Moliere appears in his own person, and in the 
midst of his whole company, with all the irritable impa- 
tience of a manager who had no piece ready. Amidst 
this green-room bustle Moliere is advising, reprimanding, 
and imploring, his "ladies and gentlemen." The char- 

27 



418 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

acters in this piece are, in fact, the actors themselves, 
who appear under their own names; and Moliere himself 
reveals many fine touches of his own poetical character, as 
well as his managerial. The personal pleasantries on his 
own performers, and the hints for plots, and the sketches 
of character which the poet incidentally throws out, 
form a perfect dramatic novelty. Some of these he him- 
self subsequently adopted, and others have been followed 
up by some dramatists without rivalling Moliere. The 
Figaro of Beaumarchais is a descendant of the Muscar- 
ine of Moliere ; but the glory of rivalling Moliere was 
reserved for our own stage. Sheridan's Critic, or a 
Tragedy Rehearsed, is a congenial dramatic satire with 
these two pieces of Moliere. 

The genius of Moliere had now stepped out of the re- 
stricted limits of the old comedy ; he now looked on the 
moving world with other eyes, and he pursued the ridic- 
ulous in society. These fresher studies were going on at 
all hours, and every object was contemplated with a view 
to comedy. His most vital characters have been traced 
to living originals, and some of his most ludicrous scenes 
had occurred in reality before they delighted the audience. 
Monsieur Jourdain had expressed his astonishment, " qu'il 
faisait de la prose," in the Count de Soissons, one of the 
uneducated noblemen devoted to the chase. The me- 
morable scene between Trissotin and Vadius, their 
mutual compliments terminating in their mutual con- 
tempt, had been rehearsed by their respective authors — the 
Abbe Cottin and Menage. The stultified booby of Limo- 
ges, Monsieur de Pourceaugnac, and the mystified mil- 
lionaire, Le JBourgeois Gentilho?nme, were copied after 
life, as was Sganarelle, in Le Medecin malgre lui. The 
portraits in that gallery of dramatic paintings, Le Mis- 
anthrope, have names inscribed under them; and the 
immortal Tartuffe was a certain bishop of Autun. No 
dramatist has conceived with greater variety the female 



THE GENIUS OF MOLIERE. 419 

character; the women of Moliere have a distinctness of 
feature, and are touched with a freshness of feeling. 
Moliere studied nature, and his comic humour is never 
checked by that unnatural wit where the poet, the more 
he discovers himself, the farther he removes himself from 
the personage of his creation. The quickening spell 
which hangs over the dramas of Moliere is this close at- 
tention to nature, wherein he greatly resembles our 
Shakspeare, for all springs from its source. His unob- 
trusive genius never occurs to us in following up his char- 
acters, and a whole scene leaves on our mind a complete 
but imperceptible effect. 

The style of Moliere has often been censured by the 
fastidiousness of his native critics, as has and du style 
familier. This does not offend the foreigner, who is 
often struck by its simplicity and vigour. Moliere pre- 
ferred the most popular and naive expressions, as well as 
the most natural incidents, to a degree which startled 
the morbid delicacy of fashion and fashionable critics. 
He had frequent occasions to resist their petty remon- 
strances ; and whenever Moliere introduced an incident, 
or made an allusion of which he knew the truth, and 
which with him had a settled meaning, this master of 
human life trusted to his instinct and his art. 

This pure and simple taste, ever rare at Paris, was the 
happy portion of the genius of this Frenchman. Hence 
he delighted to try his farcical pieces, for we cannot im- 
agine that they were his more elevated comedies, on his 
old maid-servant. This maid, probably, had a keen relish 
for comic humour, for once when Moliere read to her the 
comedy of another writer as his own, she soon detected 
the trick, declaring that it could not be her master's. 
Hence, too, our poet invited even children to be present 
on such rehearsals, and at certain points would watch 
their emotions. Hence, too, in his character of manager, 
he taught his actors to study nature. An actress, apt to 



420 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

speak freely, told him, " You torment us all ; but you 
never speak to my husband." This man, originally a 
candle-snuffer, was a perfect child of nature, and acted 
the Thomas Diaforius, in Le Malade Imaginaire. Moliere 
replied, " I should be sorry to say a word to him ; I should 
spoil his acting. Nature has provided him with better 
lessons to perform his parts than any which I could give 
him." We may imagine Shakspeare thus addressing his 
company, had the poet been also the manager. 

A remarkable incident in the history of the genius of 
Moliere is the frequent recurrence of the poet to the 
passion of jealousy. The "jaundice in the lover's eye," 
he lias painted with every tint of his imagination. " The 
green-eyed monster " takes all shapes, and is placed in 
every position. Solemn, or gay, or satirical, he some- 
times appears in agony, but often seems to make its 
" trifles light as air," only ridiculous as a source of con 
solation. Was Le Contemplateur comic in his melan- 
choly, or melancholy in his comic humour ? 

The truth is, that the poet himself had to pass through 
those painful stages which he has dramatised. The do- 
mestic life of Moliere was itself very dramatic ; it afforded 
Goldoni a comedy of five acts, to reveal the secrets of the 
family circle of Moliere ; and 1' Abb ate Chiari, an Italian 
novelist and playwright, has taken for a comic subject, 
Moliere, the Jealous Husband. 

The French, in their " petite morale " on conjugal 
fidelity, appear so tolerant as to leave little sympathy 
for the real sufferer. Why should they else have treated 
domestic jealousy as a foible for ridicule, rather than a 
subject for deep passion? Their tragic drama exhibits 
no Othello, nor their comedy a Kitely, or a Suspicious 
Husband. Moliere, while his own heart was the victim, 
conformed to the national taste, by often placing the 
object on its comic side. Domestic jealousy is a passion 
which admits of a great diversity of subjects, from the 



THE GENIUS OF MOLIERE. 421 

tragic or the pathetic, to the absurd and the ludicrous. 
We have them all in Moliere. Moliere often was him- 
self " Le Cocu Imaginaire ;" he had been in the position 
of the guardian in ISEcole des Maris. Like Arnolphe 
in IlEcole des Femmes, he had taken on himself to rear 
a young wife who played the same part, though with less 
innocence ; and like the Misanthrope, where the scene 
between Alceste and Celimene is " une des plus fortes 
qui existant au theatre," he was deeply entangled in the 
wily cruelties of scornful coquetry, and we know that at 
times he suffered in the " hell of lovers " the torrnents 
of his own Jealous Prince. 

When this poet cast his fate with a troop of comedians, 
as the manager, and whom he never would abandon, when 
at the height of his fortune, could he avoid accustoming 
himself to the relaxed habits of that gay and sorrowful 
race, who, " of imagination all compact," too often partake 
of the passions they inspire in the scene ? The first actress, 
Madame Bejard, boasted that, with the exception of the 
poet, she had never dispensed her personal favours but 
to the aristocracy. The constancy of Moliere was inter- 
rupted by another actress, Du Pare ; beautiful but insen- 
sible, she only tormented the poet, and furnished him 
with some severe lessons for the coquetry of his Celimene, 
in Le Misanthrope. The facility of the transition of the 
tender passion had more closely united the susceptible 
poet to Mademoiselle de Brie. But Madame Bejard, not 
content to be the chief actress, and to hold her partner- 
ship in " the properties," to retain her ancient authority 
over the poet, introduced, suddenly, a blushing daughter, 
some say a younger sister, who had hitherto resided at 
Avignon, and who she declared was the offspring of the 
count of Modena, by a secret marriage. Armando Be- 
jard soon attracted the paternal attentions of the poet. 
She became the secret idol of his retired moments, while 
he fondly thought that he could mould a young mmd, in 



422 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

its innocence, to his own sympathies. The mother and 
the daughter never agreed. Armande sought his protec- 
tion; and one day rushing into his study, declared that 
she would marry her friend. The elder Bejard freely 
consented to avenge herself on De Brie De Brie was 
indulgent, though "the little creature," she observed, 
was to be yoked to one old enough to be her father. 
Under the same roof were now heard the voices of the 
three females, and Moliere meditating scenes of feminine 
jealousies. 

Moliere was fascinated by his youthful wife; her 
lighter follies charmed: two years riveted the connubial 
chains. Moliere was a husband who was always a Lover. 
The actor on the Btage was the very man he personated. 
Mademoiselle Moliere, aa Bhe was called by the public, 
was the Lucile in Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme. With 
what fervour the poet feels her neglect ! with what eager- 
ness he defends her from the animadversions of the friend 
who would have dissolved the spell ! 

The poet was doomed to endure more poignant sorrows 
than slights. Mademoiselle had the art of persuading 
Moliere that he was only his own " cocu imaginaire ;" 
but these domestic embarrassments multiplied. Made- 
moiselle, reckless of the distinguished name she bore, 
while she gratified her personal vanity by a lavish ex- 
penditure, practised that artful coquetry which attracted 
a crowd of loungers. Moliere found no repose in his 
own house, and retreated to a country-house, where, how- 
ever, his restless jealousy often drove him back to scenes 
which he trembled to witness. At length came the last 
argument of outraged matrimony — he threatened con- 
finement. To prevent a public rupture, Moliere consent- 
ed to live under the same roof, and only to meet at the 
theatre. Weak only in love, however divided from his 
wife, Moliere remained her perpetual lover. He said, in 
confidence, " I am born with every disposition to tender- 



THE GENIUS OF MOLIERE. 423 

ness. When I married, she was too young to betray any 
evil inclinations. My studies were devoted to her, but I 
soon discovered her indifference. I ascribed it to her 
temper ; her foolish passion for Count Guiche made too 
much noise to leave me even this apparent tranquillity 
I resolved to live with her as an honourable man, whose 
reputation does not depend on the bad conduct of his 
wife. My kindness has not changed her, but my com- 
passion has increased. Those who have not experienced 
these delicate emotions have never truly loved. In her 
absence her image is before me ; in her presence, I am 
deprived of all reflection ; I have no longer eyes for her 
defects ; I only view her amiable. Is not this the last 
extreme of folly ? And are you not surprised that I, 
reasoning as I do, am only sensible of the weakness 
which I cannot throw off?" 

Few men of genius have left in their writings deeper 
impressions of their personal feelings than Moliere. 
With strong passions in a feeble frame, he had duped his 
imagination that, like another Pygmalion, he would 
create a woman by his own art. In silence and agony 
he tasted the bitter fruits of the disordered habits of the 
life of a comedian, a manager, and a poet. His income 
was splendid; but he himself was a stranger to dissipa- 
tion. He was a domestic man, of a pensive and even 
melancholy temperament. Silent and reserved, unless in 
conversation with that more intimate circle whose litera- 
ture aided his genius, or whose friendship consoled for 
his domestic disturbances, his habits were minutely me- 
thodical ; the strictest order was observed throughout 
his establishment; the hours of dinner, of writing, of 
amusement, were allotted, and the slightest derangement 
in his own apartment excited a morbid irritability which 
would interrupt his studies for whole days. 

Who, without this tale of Moliere, could conjecture, 
that one skilled in the workings of our nature would 



424 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

have ventured on the perilous experiment of equalizing 
sixteen years against forty — weighing roses against grey 
locks — to convert a wayward coquette, through her 
capricious womanhood, into an attached wife? Yet, 
although Mademoiselle could cherish no personal love 
for the intellectual being, and hastened to change the 
immortal name she bore for a more terrestrial man, she 
seems to have been impressed by a perfect conviction of 
his creative genius. When the Archbishop of Paris, in 
the pride of prelacy, refused the rights of sepulture to 
the corpse of Moliere the actor, it was her voice which 
reminded the world of Moliere tiie poet, exclaiming — 
" Have they denied a grave to the man to whom Greece 
would have raised an altar !" 



THE SENSIBILITY OF RACINE. 

The " Memoirs of the poet Racine," composed by his 
son, who was himself no contemptible poet, may be 
classed among those precious pieces of biography so de- 
lightful to the philosopher who studies human nature, 
and the literary man whose curiosity is interested in the 
history of his republic. Such works are rare, and rank 
in merit next to autobiographies. Such biographical 
sketches, like Boswell's of Johnson, contain what we 
often regret is wanting in the more regular life of a 
professed biographer. These desultory memoirs interest 
by their warmth, their more personal acquaintance with 
the hero, and abound with those minuter strokes which 
give so much life to the individual character. 

The prominent feature in the character of Racine was 
an excessive tenderness of feeling ; his profound sensi- 
bility even to its infirmity, the tears which would cover 
his face, and the agony in his heart, were perhaps na- 
tional. But if this sensibility produced at times the 



SENSIBILITY OF KACINE. 425 

softest emotions, if it made him the poet of lovers, and 
even the poet of imagination, it also rendered him too 
feelingly alive to criticism, it embittered his days with 
too keen a perception of the domestic miseries which all 
men must alike undergo. 

During a dramatic performance at St. Cyr, the youth- 
ful representative of Esther suddenly forgot her part ; 
the agitated poet exclaimed, " Oh, mademoiselle, you 
are ruining my piece !" Terrified at this reprimand, the 
young actress wept ; the poet flew to her, wiped away 
her tears, and with contagious sympathy shed tears him- 
self. " I do not hesitate," says Louis Racine, " to relate 
such minute circumstances, because this facility of shed- 
ding tears shows the goodness of the heart, according to 
the observation of the ancients — 

ayadol (F aptdatcpveg avSpeg. 

This morbid state of feeling made his whole literary 
life uneasy; unjust criticism affected him as much as the 
most poignant, and there was nothing he dreaded more 
than that his son should become a writer of tragedies. 
"I will not dissimulate," he says, addressing his son, 
" that in the heat of composition we are not sometimes 
pleased with ourselves ; but you may believe me, when 
the day after we look over our work, we are astonished 
not to find that excellence we admired in the evening ; 
and when we reflect that even what we find good ought 
to be still better, and how distant we are still from per- 
fection, we are discouraged and dissatisfied. Besides all 
this, although the approbation I have received has been 
very flattering, the least adverse criticism, even miserable 
as it might be, has always occasioned me more vexation 
than all the praise I received could give rne pleasure." 
And, again, he endeavors to impress on him that the 
favour he received from the world he owed not to his 
verses. " Do not imagine that they are my verses that 



42G LITERARY CHARACTER. 

attract all these kindnesses. Corneille composes V( 
a hundred times finer than mine, but no one regards him. 
His verses are <»nlv applauded from the mouths of the 
actors. I do not tire men of the world by reciting my 
works; I never allude to them; I endeavour to amuse 
them with matters which please them. My talent in 
their company is, not to make them feel that I have any 
genius, but to show them that they possess some them- 
selves. When you observe the duke pass several hours 
with me, you would be surprised, were you present, that 

he frequently quits me without my having uttered three 
words; but gradually I put him in a humour of chatting, 
and he leaves me more satisfied with himself than with 
me." When Rochefoueault said that Boileau and Racine 
had only one kind of genius, and could only talk about 
their own poetry, it is evident that the observation should 
not have extended to Racine, however it might to Boi- 
leau. It was Racine's excessive sensibility which made 
him the finest dramatic reciter. The celebrated actress, 
Mademoiselle Champmesle,* the heroine of his tragedies, 
had no genius whatever for the stage, but she had beauty, 
voice, and memory. Racine taught her first to compre- 
hend the verses she was going to recite, showed her the 
appropriate gesture, and gave her the variable tones, 
which he even sometimes noted down. His pupil, faith- 
ful to her lessons, though a mere actress of art, on the 
stage seemed inspired by passion ; and as she, thus 
formed and fashioned, naturally only played thus effect- 



* Racine first met this actress at the Marquis de Sevigne's petit 
soupcrs ; so much lamented by his more famous mother in one of her 
admirable letters, who speaks of " the Racines and the Despreaux's " 
who assisted his prodigality. In one of Madame de Sevigne's letters, 
dated in 1672, she somewhat rashly declares, ''Racine now writes his 
dramas, not for posterity, but for Mademoiselle Champmesle:" she had 
then forsaken the marquis for the poet, who wrote Roxane in Bajazet 
expressly for her. — Ed. 



THE SENSIBILITY OF EACINE. 427 

ively in the dramas of her preceptor, it was supposed 
that love for the poet inspired the actress. 

When Racine read aloud he diffused his own enthusi- 
asm; once with Boileau and Nicole, amid a literary 
circle, they talked of Sophocles, whom Racine greatly 
admired, but from whom he had never dared to borrow 
a tragic subject. Taking up a Greek Sophocles, and 
translating the (Edipus, the French poet became so 
deeply imbued with the Greek tragedian, that his audit- 
ors caught all the emotions of terror and pity. " I have 
seen," says one of those auditors, " our best pieces repre- 
sented by our best actors, but never anything approached 
the agitation which then came over us ; and to this dis- 
tant day I have never lost the recollection of Racine, 
with the volume in his hand, full of emotion, and we all 
breathlessly pressing around him." 

It was the poet's sensibility that urged him to make 
the most extraordinary sacrifice that ever poet made ; 
he wished to get rid entirely of that poetical fame to 
which he owed everything, and which was at once his 
pleasure, his pride, and his property. His education had 
been a religious one, in the Port-Royal;* but when 
Nicole, one of that illustrious fraternity, with undistin- 
guishing fanaticism, had once asserted that all dramatic 
writers were public poisoners of souls, Racine, in the 
pride and strength of his genius, had eloquently repelled 
the denouncement. But now, having yet only half run 
his unrivalled course, he turned aside, relinquished its 
glory, repented of his success, and resolved to write no 
more tragedies. f He determined to enter into the austere 



* For an account of this very celebrated religious foundation, its for- 
tunes and misfortunes, see the " Curiosities of Literature," vol. i., p. 
94.— Ed. 

f Eacine ultimately conceived an aversion for his dramatic offspring 
and could never be induced to edit a proper edition of his works, or 
even give a few lessons in declamation to a juvenile princess, who se- 



428 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

order of the Chartreux ; but his confessor, more rational 
than his penitent, assured him that a character so feeling 
as his own, and so long accustomed to the world, could 
not endure that terrible solitude. He advised him to 
marry a woman of a serious turn, and that little domes- 
tic occupations would withdraw him from the passion he 
seemed most to dread, that of writing verses. 

The marriage of Racine was an act of penance — neither 
love nor interest had any share in the union. His wife 
was a good sort of woman, but perhaps the most insen- 
sible of her sex; and the properesl person in the world to 
mortify the passion of literary glory, and the momentary 
exultation of literary vanity.* It is scarcely credible, but 
most certainly true, since her own son relates the fact, 
that the wife of Racine had neither seen acted, nor ever 
read, nor desired to read, the tragedies which had ren- 
dered her husband so celebrated throughout Europe; she 
had only learned some of their titles in conversation. 
She was as insensible to fortune as to fame. One day, 
when Racine returned from Versailles, with the princely 
gift from Louis XIV. of a purse of 1000 louis, lie hastened 
to embrace his wife, and to show her the treasure. But 
she was full of trouble, for one of the children for two 
days had not studied. " "We will talk of this another 
time," exclaimed the poet ; " at present let us be happy.' 

But she insisted he ought instantly to reprimand this 
child, and continued her complaints; while Bolieau in 
astonishment paced to and fro, perhaps thinking of his 
Satire on "Women, and exclaiming, " "What insensibility ! 
Is it possible that a purse of 1000 louis is not worth a 
thought !" This stoical apathy did not arise in Madame 

lected his Andromaque for the subject, perhaps out of compliment to 
the poet, whose first visit became in consequence his last. — Ed. 

* The lad j he chose was one Catherine de Romanet, whose family 
was of great respectability but of small fortune. She is not described 
as possessing any marked personal attractions. — Ed. 



THE SENSIBILITY OF RACINE. 429 

Racine from the grandeur, but the littleness, of her mind. 
Her prayer-books and her children were the sole objects 
that interested this good woman. Racine's sensibility 
was not mitigated by his marriage; domestic sorrows 
weighed heavily on his spirits : when the illness of his 
children agitated him, he sometimes exclaimed, " Why 
did I expose myself to all this ? Why was I persuaded 
not to be a Chartreux ?" His letters to his children are 
those of a father and a friend ; kind exhortations, or pa- 
thetic reprimands ; he enters into the most domestic 
detail, while he does not conceal from them the medioc- 
rity of their fortune. "Had you known him in his 
family," said Louis Racine, " you would be more alive 
to his poetical character, you would then know why his 
verses are always so full of sentiment. He was never 
more pleased than when, permitted to be absent from the 
court, he could come among us to pass a few days. 
Even in the presence of strangers he dared to be a father, 
and used to join us in our sports. I well remember our 
processions, in which my sisters were the clergy, I the 
rector, and the author of 'Athaliah,' chanting with us, 
carried the cross." 

At length this infirm sensibility abridged his days. 
He was naturally of a melancholic temperament, apt to 
dwell on objects which occasion pain, rather than on 
those which exhilarate. Louis Racine observes that his 
character resembled Cicero's description of himself, moro 
inclined to dread unfortunate events, than to hope for 
happy ones ; semper magis adversos rerum exitus metuens 
quam sperans secundos. In the last incident of his life 
his extreme sensibility led him to imagine as present a 
misfortune which might never have occurred. 

Madame de Maintenon, one day in conversation with 
the poet, alluded to the misery of the people. Racine 
observed it was the usual consequence of long wars : the 
subject was animating, and he entered into it with all 



430 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

that enthusiasm peculiar to himself. Madame de Main- 
tenon was charmed with his eloquent effusion, and 
requested him to give her his observations in writing, 
assuring him they should not go out of her hand. She 
was reading his memoir when the kins* entered her 
apartment ; he took it up, and, after having looked over 
a few pages, he inquired with great quickness who was 
the author. She replied it was a secret ; hut the king 
was peremptory, and the author was named. The king 
asked with great dissatisfaction, "Is it because he writes 
the most perfect verses, that he thinks that he is able to 
become a statesman ?" 

Madame de Maintenon told the poet all that had 
passed, and declined to receive his visits for the present. 
Racine was shortly after attacked with violent fever. In 
the languor of recovery he addressed Madame de Main- 
tenon to petition to have his pension freed from some 
new tax ; and he added an apology for his presumption 
in suggesting the cause of the miseries of the people, 
with an humiliation that betrays the alarms that existed 
in his mind. The letter is too long to transcribe, but it 
is a singular instance how genius can degrade itself 
when it has placed all its felicity on the varying smiles 
of those we call the great. Well might his friend 
Boileau, who had nothing of his sensibility nor imagina- 
tion, exclaim, with his good sense, of the court : — 

Quel sejour etranger, et pour vous et pour moi I 

Racine afterwards saw Madame de Maintenon walking in 
the gardens of Versailles ; she drew aside into a retired 
allee to meet him ; she exhorted him to exert his 
patience and fortitude, and told him that all would end 
well. " No, madam," he replied, " never !" " Do you 
then doubt," she said, " either my heart, or my influence ?" 
He replied, " I acknowledge your influence, and know * 
your goodness to me ; but I have an aunt who loves me 



THE SENSIBILITY OF RACINE. 431 

in quite a different manner. That pious woman every- 
day implores God to bestow on me disgrace, humiliation, 
and occasions for penitence, and she has more influence 
than you." As he said these words, the sound of a 
carriage was heard ; " The king is coming !" said Madame 
de Maintenon; "hide yourself!" 

To this last point of misery and degradation was this 
great genius reduced. Shortly after he died, and was 
buried at the feet of his master in the chapel of the stu- 
dious and religious society of Port-Royal. 

The sacred dramas of Esther and Athaliah were among 
the latter productions of Racine. The fate of Athaliah, 
his masterpiece, was remarkable. The public imagined 
that it was a piece written only for children, as it was 
performed by the young scholars of St. Cyr, and received 
it so coldly that Racine was astonished and disgusted.* 
He earnestly requested Boileau's opinion, who main- 
tained it was his capital work. " I understand these 
things," said he, "and the public y reviendra." The pre- 
diction was a true one, but it was accomplished too late, 
long after the death of the author ; it was never appre- 
ciatecTtill it was publicly performed. 

Boileau and Racine derived little or no profit from the 
booksellers.- Boileau particularly, though fond of money, 
was so delicate on this point that he gave all his works 
away. It was this that made him so bold in railing at 
those authors qui mettent leur Apollon aux gages ffun 

*They were written at the request of Madame de Maintenon, for 
the pupils of her favourite establishment at St. Cyr ; she was anxious 
that they should be perfect in declamation, and she tried them with 
the poet's Andromaque, but they recited it with so much passion and 
feeling that they alarmed their patroness, who told Racine " it was so 
well done that she would be careful they should never act that drama 
again," and urged him to write plays on sacred subjects expressly for 
their use. He had not written a play for upwards of ten years ; he 
now composed his Esther, making that character a nattering reflection 
of Maintenon's career. — Ed. 



432 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

libraire, and he declared that he had only inserted these 
verses, 

Je sai qu'um noble esprit peut sans honte et sans crime 
Tirer de son travail un tribut legitime, 

to console Racine, who had received some profits from 
the printing of his tragedies. Those profits were, how- 
ever, inconsiderable ; the truth is, the king remunerated 
the poets. 

Racine's first royal mark of favour was an order signed 
by Colbert for six hundred livres, to give him the mums 
of contin wing his studies of the belles-lettres. He received, 
by an account found among his papers, above forty thou- 
sand livres from the cassette of the king, by the hand of 
the first valet-de-chambre. Besides these gifts, Racine 
had a pension of four thousand livres as historiographer, 
and another pension as a man of letters. 

Which is the more honourable ? to crouch for a salary 
brought by the hand of the first valet-de-chambre, or to 
exult in the tribute offered by the public to an author ? 



OF STERNE. 

Cervaxtes is immortal — Rabelais and Sterne have 
passed away to the curious. 

These fraternal geniuses alike chose their subjects 
from their own times. Cervantes, with the innocent de- 
sign of correcting a temporary folly of his countrymen, 
so that the very success of the design might have proved 
fatal to the work itself; for when he had cut off the 
heads of the Hydra, an extinct monster might cease to 
interest the readers of other times, and other manners. 
But Cervantes, with judgment equal to his invention, 
and with a cast of genius made for all times, delighted 
his contemporaries and charms his posterity. He looked 



OF STERNE. 433 

to the world and collected other follies than the Spanish 
ones, and to another age than the administration of the 
duke of Lerma ; with more genuine pleasantry than any 
writer from the days of Lucian, not a solitary spot has 
soiled the purity of his page ; while there is scarcely a 
subject in human nature for which we might not find 
some apposite illustration. His style, pure as his thoughts, 
is, however, a magic which ceases to work in all transla- 
tions, and Cervantes is not Cervantes in English or in 
French ; yet still he retains his popularity among all the' 
nations of Europe ; which is more than we can say even 
of our Shakspeare ! 

Rabelais and Sterne were not perhaps inferior in 
genius, and they were read with as much avidity and 
delight as the Spaniard. "Le docte Rabelais" had 
the learning which the Englishman wanted; while un- 
happily Sterne undertook to satirise false erudition, 
which requires the* knowledge of the true. Though the 
JPapemanes, on whom Rabelais has exhausted his gro- 
tesque humour and his caustic satire, have not yet walked, 
off the stage, we pay a heavy price in the grossness of 
his ribaldry and his tiresome balderdash for odd stories 
and flashes of witty humour. Rabelais hardly finds 
readers even in France, with the exception of a few liter- 
ary antiquaries. The day has passed when a gay dis- 
solute abbe could obtain a rich abbey by getting Rabelais 
by heart, for the perpetual improvement of his patron — 
and Rabelais is now little more than a Rabelais by 
tradition.* 

* The clergy were not so unfavourable to Rabelais as might have 
been expected. He was through life protected by the Cardinal Jean 
du Bellay, Bishop of Paris, who employed him in various important 
negotiations ; and it is recorded of him that he refused a scholar admit- 
tance to his table because he had not read his works. This famili- 
arity with his grotesque romance was also shared by Cardinal Duprat 
who is said to have always carried a copy of it with him, as if it was 
his breviary The anecdote of the priest who obtained promotion from 
28 



434 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

In my youth the world doted on Sterne! Martin Sher- 
lock ranks him among "the luminaries of the century." 
Forty years ago, young men in their most facetious 
humours never failed to find the archetypes of society in 
the Shandy family — every good-natured soul was ancle 
Toby, every humorist was old Shandy, every child of 
Nature was Corporal Trim! It may now be doubted 
whether Sterne's natural dispositions were the humorous 
or the pathetic: the pathetic has survived ! 

There is nothing of a more ambiguous nature than 
strong humour, and Sterne found it to be so ; and latterly, 
in despair, he asserted that "the taste for humour is the 
gift of heaven !" I have frequently observed how 
humour, like the taste for olives, is even repugnant to 
some palates, and have witnessed the epicure of humour 
lose it all by discovering how some have utterly rejected 
his favourite relish ! Even men of wit may not taste 
humour ! The celebrated Dr. Cheyne, who was not 
himself deficient in originality of thinking with great 
.learning and knowledge, once entrusted to a friend 
a remarkable literary confession. Dr. Cheyne assured 
him that "he could not read 'Don Quixote' with any 
pleasure, nor had any taste for ' Hudibras' or ' Gulliver ;' 
and that what we call wit and humour in these authors 
he considered as false ornaments, and never to be found 
in those compositions of the ancients which we most 
admire and esteem."* Cheyne seems to have held 
Aristophanes and Lucian monstrously cheap ! The 
ancients, indeed, appear not to have possessed that comic 
quality that we understand as humour, nor can I dis- 

a knowledge of his works is given in the " Curiosities of Literature," 
vol. ii., p. 10. — Ed. 

* This friend, it now appears, was Dr. King, of Oxford, whose 
anecdotes have recently been published. This curious fact is given in 
a strange hodge-podge, entitled "The Dreamer ;" a remarkable instance 
where a writer of learning often conceives that to be humour, which 
to others is not even intelligible 1 



OF STERNE. 435 

cover a word which exactly corresponds with our term 
humour in any language, ancient or modern. Cervantes 
excels in that sly satire which hides itself under the 
cloak of gravity, but this is not the sort of humour which 
so beautifully plays about the delicacy of Addison's 
page; and both are distinct from the broader and 
stronger humour of Sterne. 

The result of Dr. Cheyne's honest confession was expe- 
rienced by Sterne, for while more than half of the three 
kingdoms were convulsed with laughter at his humour, 
the other part were obdurately dull to it. Take, for 
instance, two very opposite effects produced by 
" Tristram Shandy" on a man of strong original humour 
himself, and a wit who had more delicacy and sarcasm 
than force and originality. The Rev. Philip Skelton 
declared that " after reading * Tristram Shandy,' he could 
not for two or three days attend seriously to his de- 
votion, it filled him with so many ludicrous ideas." But 
Horace Walpole, who found his " Sentimental Journey" 
very pleasing, declares that of " his tiresome ' Tristram 
Shandy,' he could never get through three volumes." 

The literary life of Sterne was a short one: it was a 
blaze of existence, and it turned his head. With his 
personal life we are only acquainted by tradition. Was 
the great sentimentalist himself unfeeling, dissolute, and 
utterly depraved? Some anecdotes which one of his 
companions* communicated to me, confirm Garrick's 
account preserved in Dr. Burney's collections, that " He 
was more dissolute in his conduct than his writings, and 
generally drove every female away by his ribaldry. 
He degenerated in London like an ill-transplanted 
shrub ; the incense of the great spoiled his head, and 
their ragouts his stomach. He grew sickly and proud — 
an invalid in body and mind." Warbiirton declared 

* Caleb Whitefoord, the wit once famed for his invention of cross- 
readings, which appeared under the name of " Papirius Cursor." 



436 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

that " he was an irrecoverable scoundrel." Authenticated 
facts are, however, wanting for a judicious summary of 
the real character of the founder of sentimental writing. 
An impenetrable mystery hangs over his family conduct ; 
he has thrown many sweet domestic touches in his own 
memoirs and letters addressed to his daughter: but it 
would seem that he was often parted from his family. 
After he had earnestly solicited the return of his wife 
from France, though she did return, he was suffered to 
die in utter neglect. 

His sermons have been observed to be characterised 
by an air of levity ; he attempted this unusual manner. It 
was probably a caprice which induced him to introduce 
one of his sermons in " Tristram Shandy ;" it was fixing 
a diamond in black velvet, and the contrast set off the 
brilliancy. But he seems then to have had no design of 
publishing his "Sermons." One day, in low spirits, com- 
plaining to Caleb Whitefoord of the state of his finan- 
ces, Caleb asked him, " if he had no sermons like the one 
in ' Tristram Shandy' ?" But Sterne had no notion that 
"sermons" were saleable, for two preceding ones had 
passed unnoticed. " If you could hit on a striking title, 
take my word for it that they would go down." The 
next day Sterne made his appearance in raptures. "I 
have it !" he cried : " Dramatic Sermons by Yorick." 
With great difficulty he was persuaded to drop this 
allusion to the church and the playhouse !* 

We are told in the short addition to his own memoirs, 
that "he submitted to fate on the 18th day of March, 

* He published these two volumes of discourses under the title of 
" Yorick's Sermons," because, as he stated in his preface, it would 
" best serve the booksellers' purpose, as Yorick's name is possibly of 
the two the more known ;" but, fearing the censure of the world, he 
added a second title-page with his own name, " to ease the minds of 
those who see a jest, and the danger which lurks under it, where no 
jest is meant." All this did not free Sterne from much severe 
criticism. — Ed. 



OF STERNE. 437 

1768, at his lodgings in Bond-street." But it does not 
appear to have been noticed that Sterne died with neither 
friend nor relation by his side ! a hired nurse was the sole 
companion of the man whose wit found admirers in every 
street, but whose heart, it would seem, could not draw 
one to his death-bed. We cannot say whether Sterne, 
who had long been dying, had resolved to practise his 
own principle, — when he made the philosopher Shandy, 
wbo had a fine saying for everything, deliver his opinion 
on death — that " there is no terror, brother Toby, in its 
looks, but what it borrows from groans and convulsions 
— and the blowing of noses, and the wiping away of 
tears with the bottoms of curtains in a dying man's room. 
Strip it of these, what is it ?" I find the moment of his 
death described in a singular book, the " Life of a Foot- 
man." I give it with all its particulars. " In the month 
of January, 1768, we set off for London. We stopped 
for some time at Almack's house in Pali-Mall. My master 
afterwards took Sir James Gray's house in Clifford-street, 
who was going ambassador to Spain. He now began 
house-keeping, hired a French cook, a house-maid, and 
kitchen-maid, and kept a great deal of the best company. 
About this time, Mr. Sterne, the celebrated author, was 
taken ill at the silk-bag shop in Old Bond-street. He 
was sometimes called i Tristram Shandy,' and sometimes 
' Yorick ;' a very great favourite of the gentlemen's. One 
day my master had company to dinner who were speaking 
about him : the Duke of Roxburgh, the Earl of March, 
the Earl of Ossory, the Duke of Grafton, Mr. Garrick, 
Mr. Hume, and Mr. James. ' John,' said my master, i go 
and inquire how Mr. Sterne is to-day.' I went, returned, 
and said, — I went to Mr. Sterne's lodging ; the mistress 
opened the door ; I inquired how he did. She told me 
to go up to the nurse ; I went into the room, and he was 
just a-dying. I waited ten minutes ; but in five he said, 
6 Now it is come !' He put up his hand as if to stop a 



433 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

blow, and died in a minute. The gentlemen were all 
very sorry, and lamented him very much."* 

Such is the simple narrative of the death of this wit !f 
Some letters and papers of Sterne are now before me 
which reveal a piece of secret history of our sentimentalist. 
The letters are addressed to a young lady of the name of 
De Fourmantel, whose ancestors were the Berangers de 
Fourmantel, who during the persecution of the French 
Protestants by Louis XIV. emigrated to this country: 
they were entitled to extensive possessions in St. Domin- 
go, but were excluded by their Protestantism. The 
elder sister became a Catholic, and obtained the estates ; 
the younger adopted the name of Beranger, and was a 

* " Travels in various parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa, during a 
series of thirty years and upwards, by Jo^n Macdonald, a cadet of the 
family of Kippoch, in Invernesshire, who after the ruin of his family, 
in 1765, was throwD, when a child, on the wide world, &c. Printed 
for the author, 1790." — He served a number of noblemen and gentle- 
men in the humble station of a footman. There is such an air of truth 
and sincerity throughout the work that I entertain no doubt of its 
genuineness. 

f Sterne was buried in the ground belonging to the parish of St. 
George's, Hanover Square, situated in the Bayswater Road. His 
funeral was " attended only by two gentlemen in a mourning coaoh, no 
bell tolling ;" and his grave has been described as "distinguished by 
a plain headstone, set up with an unsuitable inscription, by a tippling 
fraternity of Freemasons." In 1761, long before his death, was 
published a satire on the tendencies of his writings, mixed with a good 
deal of personal censure, in a pamphlet entitled "A Funeral Discourse, 
occasioned by the much lamented death of Mr. Yorick, preached before 
a very mixed society of Jemmies, Jessamies, Methodists, and Christians, 
at a nocturnal meeting in Petticoat Lane ; by Christopher Flagellan, 
A. M." As one of the minor "Curiosities of Literature" this tract is worth 
noting ; its author, in a preface, says that " it has been maliciously, or 
rather stupidly, reported that the late Mr. Sterne, alias Yorick, is not 
dead ; but that, on the contrary, he is writing a fifth and sixth, and 
has carried his plan as far as a fiftieth and sixtieth volume of the book 
called 'The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy;' but they are 
rather to be attributed to his ghastly ghost, which is said to walk the 
purlieus of Covent Garden and Drury Lane." — Ed. 



OF STERNE. • 439 

governess to the Countess of Bristol. The paper states 
that Catherine de Fourmantel formed an attachment to 
Sterne, and that it was the expectation of their friends 
that they would be imited; "but that on a visit Sterne 
became acquainted with a lady, whom he married in the 
space of one month, after having paid his addresses to 
Miss de Fourmantel for live years.- The consequence 
was, the total derangement of intellect of this young 
lady. She was confined in a private madhouse. Sterne 
twice saw her there ; and from observation on her state 
drew the " Maria" whom he has so pathetically described. 
The elder sister, at the instigation of the father of the 
communicator of these letters, came to England, and 
took charge of the unhappy Maria, who died at Paris. 
" For many years," says the writer of this statement, 
" my mother had the handkerchief Sterne alludes to." 
The anxious wish of Sterne was to have his letters 
returned to him. In this he failed; and such as they 
are, without date, either of time or place, they are now 
before me. 

The billets-doux are unquestionably authentic, but the 
statement is inaccurate. I doubt whether- the narrative 
be correct in stating that Sterne married after an acquaint- 
ance of one month ; for he tells us in his Memoirs that 
he courted his wife for two years ; he, however, married 
in 1741. The "Sermon of Elijah," which he presents to 
Miss de Fourmantel in one of these letters, was not pub- 
lished till 1747. Her disordered mind could not therefore 
have been occasioned by the sudden marriage of Sterne. 
A sentimental intercourse evidently existed between 
them. He perhaps sought in her sympathy, consolation 
for his domestic infelicity ; he communicates to her the 
minutest events of his early fame; and these letters, 
which certainly seem very like love-letters, present a pic- 
ture of his life in town in the full flower of his fame eager 
with hope and flushed with success. 



440 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

LETTER I. 

" My dear Kitty, — I beg you will accept of the in- 
closed sermon, which I do not make you a present of 
merely because it was wrote by myself, but because there 
is a beautiful character in it of a lender and compassionate 
mind in the picture given of Elijah. Read it, my dear 
Kitty, and believe me when I assure you that I Bee -nine- 
thing of the same kind and gentle disposition in your 
heart which T have painted in the prophet's, which has 
attached me so much to you and your interest, that I 
shall live and die 

"Your affectionate and faithful servant, 

" Laurence Stekn k. 

" P. S. — If possible, I will see you this afternoon be- 
fore I go to Mr. Fothergil's. Adieu, dear friend, — I had 
the pleasure to drink your health last night." 

LETTER II. 

" My dear Kitty, — If this billet catches you in bed, 
you are a lazy, sleepy little slut, and I am a giddy, fool- 
ish, unthinking fellow, for keeping you so late up — but 
this Sabbath is a day of rest, at the same time that it is 
a day of sorrow ; for I shall not see my dear creature to- 
day, unless you meet me at Taylor's half an hour after 
twelve ; but in this do as you like. I have ordered Mat- 
thew to turn thief, and steal you a quart of honey ; what 
is honey to the sweetness of thee, who art sweeter than 
all the flowers it comes from ! I love you to distraction, 
Kitty, and will love you on so to eternity — so adieu, and 
believe, what time will only prove me, that I am, 

" Yours." 

LETTER HI. 

" My dear Kitty, — I have sent you a pot of sweet- 
meats and a pot of honey — neither of them half so sweet 



OF STERNE. 441 

as yourself — but don't be vain upon this, or presume to 
grow sour upon this character of sweetness I give you ; 
for if you do I shall send you a pot of pickles (by the 
way of contraries) to sweeten you up, and bring you to 
yourself again — whatever changes happen to you, believe 
me that I am unalterably yours, and according to your 
motto, such a one, my dear Kitty, 

" Qui ne changera pas qu'en mouranfc. 

" L. S." 

He came up to town in 1760, to publish the two first 
volumes of " Shandy," of which the first edition had 
appeared at York the preceding year. 

letter rv. 

" London, May 8. 

" Mv dear Kitty, — I have arrived here safe and sound 
— except for the hole in my heart which you have made, 
like a dear enchanting slut as you are. — I shall take 
lodgings this morning in Piccadilly or the Haymarket, 
and before I send this letter will let you know where to 
direct a letter to me, which letter I shall wait for by the 
return of the post with great impatience. 

" I have the greatest honours paid me, and most civil- 
ities shown me that were ever known from the great ; 
and am engaged already to ten noblemen and men of 
fashion to dine. Mr. Garrick pays me all and more hon- 
our than I could look for : I dined with him to-day, and 
he has prompted numbers of great people to carry me to 
dine with them — he has given me an order for the liberty 
of his boxes, and of every part of his house, for the whole 
season ; and indeed leaves nothing undone that can do 
me either service or credit. He has undertaken the 
whole management of the booksellers, and will procure 
me a great price — but more of this in my next. 

" And now, my dear girl, let me assure you of the 
truest friendship for yon. that ever man bore towards a 



442 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

woman — wherever I am, my heart is warm towards you, 
and ever shall be, till it is cold forever. I thank you for 
the kind proof you gave me of your desire to make my 
heart easy in ordering yourself to be denied to you know 
who — while I am so miserable to be separated from my 
dear, dear Kitty, it would have stabbed my soul to have 
thought such a fellow could have the liberty of coming 
near you. — I therefore take this proof of your love and 
good principles most kindly — and have as much faith 
and dependence upon you in it, as if I was at your elbow 
— would to God I was at this moment — for I am sitting 
solitary and alone in my bedchamber (ten o'clock at 
night after the play), and would give a guinea for a 
squeeze of your hand. I send my soul perpetually out to 
see what you are a-doing — wish I could convey my body 
with it — adieu, dear and kind girl. Ever your kind friend 
and affectionate admirer. 

" I go to the oratorio this night. My service to your 
mamma." 

LETTER V. 

" My dear Kitty, — Though I have but a moment's 
time to spare, I would not omit writing you an account 
of my good fortune ; my Lord Fauconberg has this day 
given me a hundred and sixty pounds a year, which I 
hold with all my preferment ; so that all or the most 
part of my sorrows and tears are going to be wiped 
away. — I have but one obstacle to my happiness now 
left — and what that is you know as well as I.* 

" I long most impatiently to see my dear Kitty. I 
had a purse of guineas given me yesterday by a bishop — 
all will do well in time. 

" From morning to night my lodgings, which by the 

* Can this allude to the death of his wife ?— that very year he tells 
his daughter he had taken a house at York, "for your mother and 
yourself." 



44:3 

bye are the genteelest in town,* are full of the greatest 
company, — I dined these two days with two ladies of 
the bedchamber — then with Lord Rockingham, Lord 
Edgcumb, Lord Winchelsea, Lord Littleton, a bishop, 
&c, &c. 

" I assure you, my dear Kitty, that Tristram is the 
fashion. — Pray to God I may see my dearest girl soon 
and well. — Adieu. 

" Tour affectionate friend, 
"L. Sterne." 



HUME, ROBERTSON, AND BIRCH. 

The rarest of literary characters is such an historian 
as Gibbon ; but we know the price which he paid for his 
acquisitions — unbroken and undeviating studies. Wilkes, 
a mere wit, could only - discover the drudgery of com- 
pilation in the profound philosopher and painter of men 
and of nations. A speculative turn of mind, delighting 
in generalising principles and aggregate views, is usually 
deficient in that closer knowledge, without which every 
step we take is on the fairy-ground of conjecture and 
theory, very apt to shift its unsubstantial scenes. The 
researchers are like the inhabitants of a city who live 
among its ancient edifices, and are in the market-places 
and the streets : but the theorists, occupied by perspec- 
tive views, with a more artist-like pencil may impose on 
us a general resemblance of things ; but often shall we 
find in those shadowy outlines how the real objects are 
nearly, if not wholly lost — for much is given which is 
fanciful, and much omitted which is true. 

Of our two popular historians, Hume and Robertson, 
alike in character but different in genius, it is much to be 
lamented that neither came to their tasks with the 

* They were the second house from St. Alban's Street, Pall MalL 



444: LITERARY CHARACTER. 

previous studies of half a life ; and their speculative or 
theoretical histories are of so much the less value when- 
ever they are deficient in that closer research which can 
be obtained only in one way ; not the most agreeable to 
those literary adventurers, for such they are, however 
high they rank in the class of genius, who grasp at early 
celebrity, and depend more on themselves than on their 
researches. 

In some curious letters to the literary antiquary Dr. " 
Birch, Robertson acknowledges " my chief object is to 
adorn, as far as I am capable of adorning, the history of 
a period which deserves to be better known." He prob- 
ably took his lesson from Voltaire, the reigning author 
of that day, and a great favourite with Robertson. Vol- 
taire indeed tell us, that no writers, but those who have 
composed tragedies, can throw any interest into a his- 
tory; that we must know to paint and excite the 
passions ; and that a history, like a dramatic piece, must 
have situation, intrigue, and catastrophe ; an observation 
which, however true, at least shows that there can be but 
a moderate quantity of truth in such agreeable narratives. 
Robertson's notion of adorning history was the pleasing 
labour of genius — it was to amplify into vastness, to 
colour into beauty, and to arrange the objects of his med- 
itation with a secret artifice of disposition. Such an 
historian is a sculptor, who, though he display a correct 
semblance of nature, is not less solicitous to display 
the miracles of his art, and enlarges his figures to a co- 
lossal dimension. Such is theoretical history. 

The theoretical historian communicates his own char- 
acter to his history ; and if, like Robertson, he be pro- 
found and politic, he detects the secret motives of his 
actors, unravels the webs of cabinet councils, explains 
projects that were unknown, and details stratagems 
which never took place. When we admire the fertile 
conceptions of the Queen Regent, of Elizabeth, and of 



HUME, ROBERTSON, AND BIRCH. 445 

Both well, we are often defrauding Robertson of whatever 
admiration may be due to such deep policy. 

When Hume received from Dr. Birch Forbes's Manu- 
scripts and Murdin's State-papers, in great haste he writes 
to his brother historian : — " What I wrote you with regard 
to Mary, &c, was from the printed histories and papers. 
But I am now sorry to tell you that by Murdin's State- 
papers, the matter is put beyond all question. I got 
these papers during the holidays by Dr. Birch's means ; 
and as soon as I read them Iran to Millar, and desired 
him very earnestly to stop the publication of your his- 
tory till I should write to you, and give you an oppor- 
tunity of correcting a mistake so important; but he 
absolutely refused compliance. He said that your book 
was now finished; that the whole narrative of Mary's 
trial must be wrote over again ; that it was uncertain 
whether the new narrative could be brought within the 
same compass with the old : that this change would re- 
quire the cancelling a great many sheets ; that there were 
scattered passages through the volumes founded on your 
theory." What an interview was this of Andrew Millar 
and David Hume ! truly the bibliopole shone to greater 
advantage than the two theoretical historians! And so 
the world had, and eagerly received, what this critical 
bookseller declared " required the new printing (that is, 
the new writing) of a great part of the edition !" 

When this successful history of Scotland invited Rob- 
ertson to pursue this newly-discovered province of philo- 
sophical or theoretical history, he was long irresolute in 
his designs, and so unpractised in those researches he 
was desirous of attempting, that his admirers would have 
lost his popular productions, had not a fortunate intro- 
duction to Dr. Birch, whose life had been spent in histori- 
cal pursuits, enabled the Scottish historian to open many 
a clasped book, and to drink of many a sealed fountain. 
Robertson was long undecided whether to write the his 



446 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

tory of Greece, of Leo X., that of William III. and Queen 
Anne, or that of Charles V., and perhaps many other 
subjects. 

We have a curious letter of Lord Orford's, detailing 
the purport of a visit Robertson paid to him to inquire 
after materials for the reigns of William and Anne ; he 
seemed to have little other knowledge than what he had 
taken upon trust. " I painted to him," says Lord Or- 
ford, " the difficulties and the want of materials — but the 
booksellers will out-argue me." Both the historian and 
" the booksellers" had resolved on another history : and 
Robertson looked upon it as a task which he wished to 
have set to him, and not a glorious toil long matured in 
his mind. But how did he come prepared to the very 
dissimilar subjects he proposed? When he resolved to 
write the history of Charles V., he confesses to Dr. Birch : 
" I never had access to any copious libraries, and do not 
pretend to any extensive knowledge of authors y but I 
have made a list of such as I thought most essential to the 
subject, and have put them down as I found them men- 
tioned in any book I happened to read. Your erudition 
and knowledge of books is infinitely superior to mine, 
and I doubt not but you will be able to make such addi- 
tions to my catalogue as may be of great use to me. I 
know very well, and to my sorrow, how servilely histo- 
rians copy from one another, and how little is to be learned 
from reading many books ; but at the same time, when 
one writes upon any particular period, it is both necessary 
and decent for him to consult every book relating to it 
upon which he can lay his hands." This avowal proves 
that Robertson knew little of the history of Charles V. 
till he began the task ; and he further confesses that " he 
had no knowledge of the Spanish or German," which, for 
the history of a Spanish monarch and a German emperor, 
was somewhat ominous of the nature of the projected 
history. 



HUME, ROBERTSON, AND BIRCH. 447 

Yet Robertson, though he once thus acknowledged, as 
we see, that he " never had access to any copious libra- 
ries, and did not pretend to any extensive knowledge of 
authors" seems to have acquired from his friend, Dr. 
Birch, who was a genuine researcher in manuscripts as 
well as printed books, a taste even for bibliographical 
ostentation, as appears by that pompous and voluminous 
list of authors prefixed to his " History of America ;" the 
most objectionable of his histories, being a perpetual 
apology for the Spanish Government, adapted to the 
meridian of the court of Madrid, rather than to the 
cause of humanity, of truth, and of philosophy. I under- 
stand, from good authority, that it would not be difficult 
to prove that our historian had barely examined them, 
and probably had never turned over half of that decep- 
tive catalogue. Birch thought so, and was probably a 
little disturbed at the overwhelming success of our elo- 
quent and penetrating historian, while his own historical 
labours, the most authentic materials of history, but not 
history itself, hardly repaid the printer. Birch's publica- 
tions are either originals, that is, letters or state-papers ; 
or they are narratives drawn from originals, for he never 
wrote but from manuscripts. They are the true materia 
historica. ~ 

Birch, however, must have enjoyed many a secret tri- 
umph over our popular historians, who had introduced 
their beautiful philosophical history into our literature ; 
the dilemma in which they sometimes found themselves 
must have amused him. He has thrown out an oblique 
stroke at Robertson's " pomp of style, and fine eloquence," 
" which too often tend to disguise the real state of the 
facts."* When' he received from Robertson the present 
of his " Charles V.," after the just tribute of his praise, 
he adds some regret that the historian had not been so 
fortunate as to have seen Burghley's State-papers, " pub- 
* See "Curiosities of Literature," vol iii., p. 387. 



448 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

lished since Christmas," and a manuscript trial of Mary, 
Queen of Scots, in Lord Royston's possession. Alas ! 
such is the fate of speculative history / a Christmas may 
come, and overturn the elaborate castle in the air. Can 
we forbear a smile when we hear Robertson, who had 
projected a history of British America, of which we pos- 
sess two chapters, when the rebellion and revolution 
broke out, congratulate himself that he had not made 
any further progress ? " It is lucky that my American 
History was not finished before this event ; how many 
plausible theories that I should have been entitled to 
form are contradicted by what has now happened !" A 
fair confession ! 

Let it not be for one moment imagined that this 
article is designed to depreciate the genius of Hume and 
Robertson, who are the noblest of our modern authors, 
and exhibit a perfect idea of the literary character. 

Forty-four years ago, I transcribed from their originals 
the correspondence of the historian with the literary anti- 
quary. For the satisfaction of the reader, I here preserve 
these literary relics. 

Letters between Dr. Birch and Dr. W. Robertson, relative 
to the Histories of Scotland and of Charles VI 

"to dr. birch. 

"Gladsmuir, 19 Sept. 1757. 

"Reverend Sir, — Though I have not the good for- 
tune to be known to you personally, I am so happy as to 
be no stranger to your writings, to which I have been in- 
debted for much useful instruction. And as I have heard 
from my friends, Sir David Dalrymple and Mr. Davidson, 
that your disposition to oblige was equal to your knowl- 
edge, I now presume to write to you and to ask your as- 
sistance without any apology. 

" I have been engaged for some time in writing the 



HUME, ROBERTSON, AND BIRCH 44.9 

history of Scotland from the death of James V. to the 
accession of James VI. to the throne of England. My 
chief object is to adorn (as far as I am capable of adorn- 
ing) the history of a period which, on account of the 
greatness of the events, and their close connection with 
the transactions in England, deserves to be better known. 
But as elegance of composition, even where a writer can 
attain that, is but a trivial merit without historical truth 
and accuracy, and as the prejudices and rage of factions, 
both religious and political, have rendered almost every 
fact, in the period which I have chosen, a matter of 
doubt or of controversy, I have therefore taken all the 
pains in my power to examine the evidence on both 
sides with exactness. You know how copious the mate- 
ria historica in this period is. Besides all the common 
historians and printed collections of papers, I have con- 
sulted several manuscripts which are to be found in this 
country. I am persuaded that there are still many manu- 
scripts worth my seeing to be met with in England, and 
for that reason I propose to pass some time in London 
this winter. I am impatient, however, to know what 
discoveries of this kind I may expect, and what are the 
treasures before me, and with regard to this I beg leave 
to consult you. 

" I was afraid for some time that Dr. Forbes's Collec- 
tions had been lost upon his death, but I am glad to find 
by your ' Memoirs ' that they are in the possession of Mr. 
Yorke. I see likewise that the ' Depe'ches de Beaumont ' 
are in the hands of the same gentleman. But I have no 
opportunity of consulting your 'Memoirs' at present, 
and I cannot remember whether the ' Depeches de Fene- 
lon ' be still preserved or not. I see that Carte has made 
a great use of them in a very busy period from 1563 to 
1576. 1 know the strength of Carte's prejudices so well, 
that I dare say many things may be found there that he 
could not see, or would not publish. May I beg the 

29 



4-50 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

favour of you to let me know whether Fenclon's papers 
be yet extant and accessible, and to give me some gen- 
eral idea of what Dr. Forbes's Collections contain with 
regard to Scotland, and whether the papers they consist 
of are different from those published by EEaynes, Ander- 
son, &c. I am far from desiring that you should enter 
into any detail that would be troublesome to you, but 
some short hint of the nature of these Collections would 
be extremely satisfying to my curiosity, and I shall es- 
teem it a great obligation laid upon me. 

"I have brought my work almost to a conclusion. If 

you would be so good as to Buggesl anything that you 

thought useful for me to know or to examine into, I shall 

receive your directions with great respect and gratitude. 

" I am, with sincere esteem, 

" Rev d Sir, Y r m. ob. & m. h. S r , 
"Wm. Robertson." 

to dr. birch. 

"Edinburgh, 1 Jan. 1759. 

" Dear Sir, — If I had not considered a letter of mere 
compliment as an impertinent interruption to one who is 
so busy as you commonly are, I would long before this 
have made my acknowledgments to you for the civilities 
which you was so good as to show me while I was in 
London. I had not only a proof of your obliging dis- 
position, but I reaped the good effects' of it. 

" The papers to which I got access by your means, 
especially those from Lord Royston, have rendered my 
work more perfect than it could have otherwise been. 
My history is now ready for publication, and I have de- 
sired Mr. Millar to send you a large paper copy of it in 
my name, which I beg you may accept as a testimony of 
my regard and of my gratitude. He will likewise trans* 



HUME, ROBERTSON, AND BIRCH. 45 1 

mit to you another copy, which I must entreat you to 
present to my Lord Royston, with such acknowledg- 
ments of his favours toward me as are proper for me to 
make. I have printed a short appendix of original 
papers. You will observe that there are several inaccu- 
racies in the press work. Mr. Millar grew impatient to 
have the book published, so that it was impossible to 
send down the proofs to me. I hope, however, the 
papers will be abundantly intelligible. I published 
them only to confirm my own system, about particular 
facts, not to obtain the character of an antiquarian. If, 
upon perusing the book, you discover any inaccuracies, 
either with regard to style or facts, whether of great or 
of small importance, I will esteem it a very great favour 
if you'll be so good as to communicate them to me. I 
shall likewise be indebted to you, if you'll let me know 
what, reception the book meets with among the literati 
of your acquaintance. I hope you will be particularly 
pleased with the critical dissertation at the end, which is 
the production of a co-partnership between me and your 
friend Mr. Davidson. Both Sir D. Dalrymple and he 
offer compliments to you. If Dean Tucker be in town 
this winter^ I beg you will offer my compliments to him. 
" I am, w. great regard, D r . Sir, 

" Y r m. obed*. & mst. o. ser*., 

" William Robeetson. 
" My address is, one of the ministers of Ed." 



TO DE. EIECH. 

"Edinburgh, 13 Dec. 1T59. 
" Deae Sie, — I beg leave once more to have recourse 
to your good nature and to your love of literature, and 
to presume upon putting you to a piece of trouble. 
After considering several subjects for another history, I 
have at last fixed upon the reign of Charles V., which 



452 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

contains the first establishment of the present political 
system of Europe. I have begun to labour seriously 
upon my task. One of the first things requisite was to 
form a catalogue of books which must be consulted. As 
I never had access to very copious libraries, 1 do not 
pretend to any extensive knowledge of authors, but I 
have made a list of such as I thought most essential to 
the subject, and have put them down just in the order 
which they occurred to me, or as I found them mentioned 
in any book I happened to read. I beg you would be 
so good as to look it over, and as your erudition and 
knowledge of books is infinitely superior to mine, I 
doubt not but you'll be able to make such additions to 
my catalogue as may be of great use to me. I know 
very well, and to my sorrow, how servilely historians 
copy from one another, and how little is to be learned 
from reading many books, but at the same time when 
one writes upon any particular period, it is both, necessary 
and decent for him to consult every book relating to it, 
upon which he can lay his hands. I am sufficiently 
master of French and Italian ; but have no knowledge 
of the Spanish or German tongues. I flatter myself 
that I shall not suffer much by this, as the two former 
languages, together with the Latin, will supply me with 
books in abundance. Mr. Walpole informed me some 
time ago, that in the catalogue of Harleian MSS. in the 
British Museum, there is a volume of papers relating to 
Charles V., it is No. 295. I do not expect much from it, 
but it would be extremely obliging if you would take the 
trouble of looking into it and of informing me in gen- 
eral what it contains. In the catalogue I have inclosed, 
this mark X is prefixed to all the books which I can get 
in this country ; if you yourself, or any friend with whom 
you can use freedom, have any of the other books in my 
list, and will be so good as to send them to Mr. Millar, 
he will forward them to me, and I shall receive them 



HUME, ROBERTSON, AND BIRCH. 453 

with great gratitude and return them with much punctu- 
ality. I beg leave to offer compliments to all our com- 
mon friends, and particularly to Dean Tucker, if he be 
in town this season. I wish it were in my power to 
confer any return for all the trouble you have taken in 
my behalf " 

FROM DR. BIRCH TO THE REV. DR. ROBERTSON AT 
EDINBURGH. 

"London, 3 Jamj. 1760. 

"Dear Sir, — Your letter of the 13 Dec r . was particu- 
larly agreeable to me, as it acquainted me with your 
resolution to resume your historic pen, and to undertake 
a subject which, from its importance and extent, and 
your manner of treating it, will be highly acceptable to 
the public. 

" I have perused your list of books to be consulted on 
this occasion ; and after transcribing it have delivered it 
to Mr. Millar ; and shall now make some additions to it. 

" The new ' Histoire d'Allemagne ' by Father Barre, 
chancellor of the University of Paris, published a few 
years ago in several volumes in q ., is a work of very 
good credit, and to be perused by you ; as is likewise 
the second edition of 'Abrege chronologique de l'His- 
toire & du Droit public d'Allemagne,' just printed at 
Paris, and formed upon the plan of President Henault's 
* Nouvel Abrege chronologique de l'Histoire de France,' 
in which the reigns of Francis I. and Henry II. will be 
proper to be seen by you. 

" The ' Memoires pour servir a l'Histoire du Cardinal 
Granvelle,' by Father Kosper Levesque, a Benedictin 
monk, which were printed at Paris in two vol 8 . 12°. in 
1*753, contain some particulars relating to Charles V. 
But this performance is much less curious than it might 
have been, considering that the author had the advantage 



454 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

of a vast collection, above an hundred volumes of the 
Cardinal's original papers, at Besan£on. Among these 
are the papers of his eminence's father, who was chan- 
cellor and minister to the Emperor Charles V. 

" Bishop Burnet, in the c Summary of Affairs before 
the Restoration,' prefixed to his 'History of his Own 
Time,' mentions a life of Frederick Elector Palatine, who 
first reformed the Palatinate, as curiously written by 
Hubert Thomas Leodius. This book, though a very rare 
one, is in my Study and shall be sent to you. You will 
find in it many facts relating to your Emperor. The 
manuscript was luckily saved when the library of Iley- 
delberg was plundered and conveyed to the Vatican 
after the taking of that city in 1622, and it was printed 
in 1024, at Francfort, in 4 10 . The writer had been secre- 
tary and councillor to the elector. 

" Another book which I shall transmit to you is a 
valuable collection of state papers, made by Mons r . 
Rivier, and printed at Blois, in 1665, in two vols. f°. 
They relate to the reigns of Francis I., Henry IL, and 
Francis IL of France. The indexes mil direct you to 
such passages as concern the Emperor. 

" As Mons r . Amelot de la Houssaie, who was extremely 
conversant in modern history, has, in the 1 st . tome of his 
' Memoires Historiques Politiques et Litteraires,' from p. 
156 to 193, treated of Charles V., I shall add that book 
to my parcel. 

" Varillas's ' Life of Henry II. of France ' should be 
looked into, though that historian has not at present 
much reputation for exactness 'and veracity. 

"Dr. Fiddes, in his 'Life of Cardinal Wolsey,' has 
frequent occasion to introduce the Emperor, his contem- 
porary, of which Bayle in his Dictionary gives us an 
express article and not a short one, for it consists of eight 
of his pages. 

"Roger Ascham, Queen Elizabeth's preceptor, when 



HUME, ROBERTSON, AND BIRCH. 455 

lie was secretary to S r . Richard Morysin amb. from K. 
Edward VI. to the imperial court, wrote to a friend of 
his ' a report and discourse of the affairs and state of 
Germany and the Emperor Charles's court. This was 
printed in the reign of Queen Elizabeth ; but the copies 
of that edition are now very rare. However this will 
be soon made public, being reprinted in an edition of all 
the author's English works now in the press. 

" The ' Epitres des Princes,' translated from the Italian 
by Belleforest, will probably supply you with some few 
things to your purpose. 

"Vol. 295 among the Harleian MSS. contains little re- 
markable except some letters from Henry VIII's amb r . in 
Spain, in 1518, of which you may see an abstract in the 
printed catalogue. 

" In Dr. Hayne's ' Collection of State Papers in the 
Hatfield History,' p. 56, is a long letter of the lord of the 
council of Henry VIII., in 1546, to his amb r . with the 
Emperor." 

TO DR. BIRCH. 

Extract from a letter of Dr. Robertson, dated College 
of Edinburgh, Oct. 8, 1765. 

" * * * I have met with many interruptions in carry- 
ing on my ' Charles V.,' partly from bad health, and 
partly from the avocations arising from performing the 
duties of my office. But I am now within sight of land. 
The historical part of the work is finished, and I am 
busy with a preliminary book, in which I propose to give 
a view of the progress in the state of society, laws, man- 
ners, and arts, from the irruption of the barbarous 
nations to the beginning of the sixteenth century. This 
is a laborious undertaking ; but I natter myself that I 
shall be able to finish it in a few months. I have kept 
the books you was so good as to send me, and shall 
return them carefully as soon as my work is done." 



456 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

OF VOLUMINOUS WORKS INCOMPLETE BY 
THE DEATHS OF THE AUTHORS. 

In those " Dances of Death" where every profession is 
shown as taken by surprise in the midst of their unfin- 
ished tasks, win-re the cook is viewed in flight, overset- 
ting his caldron of soup, and the physician, while 
inspecting his patient's urinal, is himself touched by the 
grim visitor, one more instance of poor mortality may 
be added in the writers of works designed to be pursued 
through a long series of volumes. The French have an 
appropriate designation for such works, which they call 
" outrages de tongue haleine" and it has often happened 
that the haieim has closed before the work. 

Works of literary history have been particularly sub- 
ject to this mortifying check on intellectual enterprise, 
and human life has not yielded a sufficient portion for 
the communication of extensive acquirement ! After 
years of reading and writing, the literary historian, who 
in his innumerable researches is critical as well as erudite, 
has still to arbitrate between conflicting opinions; to 
resolve on the doubtful, to clear up the obscure, and to 
grasp at remote researches : — but he dies, and leaves his 
favourite volumes little more than a project ! 

Feelingly the antiquary Hearne laments this general 
forgetfulness of the nature of all human concerns in the 
mind of the antiquary, who is so busied with other times 
and so interested for other persons than those about him. 
" It is the business of a good antiquary, as of a good 
man, to have mortality always before him." 

A few illustrious scholars have indeed escaped the fate 
reserved for most of their brothers. A long life, and the 
art of multiplying that life not only by an early attach- 
ment to study, but by that order and arrangement which 
shortens our researches, have sufficed for a Muratori. 
With such a student time was a great capital which he 



OF INCOMPLETE VOLUMINOUS WORKS. 457 

knew to put out at compound interest ; and this Varro 
of the Italians, who performed an infinite number of 
things in the circumscribed period of ordinary life, ap- 
pears not to have felt any dread of leaving his volumin- 
ous labours unfinished, but rather of wanting one to 
begin. This literary Alexander thought he might want 
a world to conquer ! Muratori was never perfectly happy 
unless employed in two large works at the same time, 
and so much dreaded the state of literary inaction, that 
he was incessantly importuning his friends to suggest to 
him objects worthy of his future composition. The flame 
kindled in his youth burned clear in his old age ; and it 
was in his senility that he produced the twelve quartos 
of his Annali cPItalia as an addition to his twenty-nine 
folios of his lierum Italicarum Scriptores, and the six 
folios of the Antiquitates Medii JEvi ! Yet these vast 
edifices of history are not all which this illustrious Italian 
has raised for his fatherland. Gibbon in his Miscellane- 
ous Works has drawn an- admirable character of Mura- 
tori 

But such a fortunate result has rarely accompanied 
the labours of the literary worthies of this order. Tira- 
boschi indeed lived to complete his great national his- 
tory of Italian literature ; but, unhappily for us, Warton, 
after feeling his way through the darker ages of our 
poetry, and just conducting us to a brighter region, in 
planning the map of the country of which he had only a 
Pisgah view, expires amid his volumes! Our poetical 
antiquary led us to the opening gates of the paradise of 
our poetry, when, alas ! they closed on him and on us ! 
The most precious portion of Warton' s history is but the 
fragment of a fragment. 

Life passes away in collecting materials — the marble 
lies in blocks — and sometimes a colonnade is erected, or 
even one whole side of a palace indicates the design of 
the architect. Count Mazzuchelli, early in life, formed a 



458 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

noble but too mighty a project, in which, however, lie 
considerably advanced. This was an historical and criti- 
cal account of the memoirs and the writings of Italian 
authors; he even commenced the publication in alpha- 
betical order, but the six invaluable folios wc post 
only contain the authors the initial letters of whose 
names are A and B ! This great literary historian had 
finished for the press other volumes, which the torpor of 
his descendants lias suffered to lie in a dormant state. 
Rich in acquisition, and judicious in his decisions, the 
days of the patriotic Mazzuchelli were freely given to 
the most curious and elegant researches in his national 
literature ; his correspondence is said to consist of forty 
volumes ; with eight of literary memoirs, besides the 
lives of his literary contemporaries ; — but Europe has 
been defrauded of the hidden treasures. 

The history of Baillet's " Jugemens des Scavans sur 
les Principaux Ouvrages des Auteurs," or Decisions of 
the Learned on the Learned, is a remarkable instance 
how little the calculations of writers of research serve 
to ascertain the period of their projected labour. Baillet 
passed his life in the midst of the great library of the 
literary family of the Lamoignons, and as an act of grati- 
tude arranged a classified catalogue in thirty-two folio 
volumes ; it indicated not only what any author had pro- 
fessedly composed on any subject, but also marked those 
passages relative to the subject which other writers had 
touched on. By means of this catalogue, the philosophi- 
cal patron of Baillet at a single glance discovered the 
great results of human knowledge on any object of his 
inquiries. This catalogue, of equal novelty and curiosity, 
the learned came to study, and often transcribed its pre- 
cious notices. Amid this world of books, the skill and 
labour of Baillet prompted him to collect the critical 
opinions of the learned, and from the experience he had 
acquired in the progress of his colossal catalogue, as a 



OF INCOMPLETE VOLUMINOUS WORKS. 459 

preliminary, sketched one of the most magnificent plans 
of literary history. This instructive project has been 
preserved by Monnoye in his edition. It consists of six 
large divisions, with innumerable subdivisions. It is a 
map of the human mind, and presents a view of the 
magnitude and variety of literature, which few can con- 
ceive. The project was too vast for an individual ; it 
now occupies seven quartos, yet it advanced no farther 
than the critics, translators, and poets, forming little 
more than the first, and a commencement of the second 
great division ; to more important classes the laborious 
projector never reached ! 

Another literary history is the " Bibliotheque Fran- 
chise" of Goujet, left unfinished by his death. He had 
designed a classified history of French literature ; but of 
its numerous classes he has only concluded that of the 
translators, and not finished the second he had com- 
menced, of the poets. He lost himself in the obscure 
times of French Literature, and consumed sixteen years 
on his eighteen volumes ! 

A great enterprise of the Benedictines, the "Histoire 
Litteraire de la France," now consists of twelve large 
quartos, which even its successive writers have only been 
able to carry down to the close of the twelfth century I* 

David Clement, a bookseller, and a book-lover, designed 
the most extensive bibliography which had ever appeared ; 
this history of books is not a barren nomenclature, the 
particulars and dissertations are sometimes curious : but 
the diligent life of the author only allowed him to pro- 
ceed as far as the letter H! The alphabetical order 
which some writers have adopted has often proved a sad 
memento of human life ! The last edition of our own 
"Biographia Britannica," feeble, imperfect, and inade- 
quate as the writers were to the task the booksellers had 

* This work lias been since resumed. 



460 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

chosen them to execute, remains still a monument which 
every literary Englishman may blush to see so hopelessly 
interrupted. 

When Le Grand D'Aussy, whose " Fabliaux " are so 
well known, adopted, in the warmth of antiquarian imag- 
ination, the plan suggested by the Marquis de Panlmy, 
first sketched in the Melanges tires cViinc grande Bibli- 
otjnqiie, of a picture of the domestic life of the French 
people from their earliest periods, the subject broke upon 
him like a vision ; it had novelty, amusement, and curi- 
osity : " le sujet vx 1 en pa rut neuf, riche et piquant. 9 * He 
revelled amid the scenes of their architecture, the inte- 
rior decorations of their houses, their changeable die--, 
their games, and recreations ; in a word, on all the parts 
which were most adapted to amuse the fancy. But when 
he came to compose the more detailed work, the fairy 
scene faded in the length, the repetition, and the never- 
ending labour and weariness ; and the three volumes 
which we now possess, instead of sports, dresses, and 
architecture, exhibit only a very curious, but not always 
a very amusing, account of the food of the French 
nation. 

~No one has more fully poured out his vexation of 
spirit — he may excite a smile in those who have never 
experienced this toil of books and manuscripts — but he 
claims the sympathy of those who would discharge their 
public duties so faithfully to the public. I shall preserve 
a striking picture of these thousand task-works, coloured 
by the literary pangs of the voluminous author, who is 
doomed never to finish his curious work : — 

" Endowed with a courage at all proofs, with health 
which, till then, was unaltered, and which excess of 
labour has greatly changed, I devoted myself to write 
the lives of the learned of the sixteenth century. Re- 
nouncing all kinds of pleasure, working ten to twelve 
hours a-day, extracting, ceaselessly copying; after this 



OF INCOMPLETE VOLUMINOUS WOKKS. 461 

sad life I now wished to draw breath, turn over what, I 
had amassed, and arrange it. I found myself possessed of 
many thousands of bulletins, of which the longest did not 
exceed many lines. At the sight of this frightful chaos, 
from which I was to form a regular history, I must con- 
fess that I shuddered ; I felt myself for some time in a 
stupor and depression of spirits ; and now actually that 
I have finished this work, I cannot endure the recollec- 
tion of that moment of alarm without a feeling of invol- 
untary terror. What a business is this, good God, of a 
compiler ! In truth, it is too much condemned ; it merits 
some regard. At length I regained courage : I returned 
to my researches : I have completed my plan, though 
every day I was forced to add, to correct, to change my 
facts as icell as my ideas ; six times has my hand re- 
copied my icork ; and, however fatiguing this may be, it 
certainly is not that portion of my task which has cost 
me most." 

The history of the " Bibliotheca Brittanica " of the late 
Dr. Watt may serve as a mortifying example of the 
length of labour and the brevity of life. To this gigantic 
work the patient zeal of the writer had devoted twenty 
years ; he had just arrived at the point of publication, 
when death folded down his last page; the son who, 
during the last four years, had toiled under the direction 
of his father, was chosen to occupy his place. The work 
was in the progress of publication, when the son also 
died ; and strangers now reap the fruits of their com- 
bined labours. 

One cannot forbear applying to this subject of volumin- 
ous designs, which must be left unfinished, the forcible 
reflection of Johnson on the planting of trees : " There 
is a frightful interval between the seed and timber. He 
that calculates the growth of trees has the unwelcome 
remembrance of the shortness of life driven hard upon 
him. He knows that he is doing what will never benefit 



4;G2 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

himself; and, when he rejoices to see the stem arise, is 
disposed to repine that another shall cut it down. 



OF DOMESTIC NOVELTIES AT FIRST CON- 
DEMNED. 

It is amusing enough to discover that tilings, now 
considered among the most useful and even agreeable 
acquisitions of domestic life, on their first introduction 
ran great risks of being rejected, by the ridicule or the 
invective which they encountered. The repulsive effect 
produced on mankind by the mere strangeness of a thing, 
which at length we find established among our indispen- 
sable conveniences, or by a practice which has now become 
one of our habits, must be ascribed sometimes to a proud 
perversity in our nature ; sometimes to the crossing of 
our interests, and to that repugnance to alter what is 
known for that which has not been sanctioned by our 
experience. This feeling has, however, within the last 
half century considerably abated ; but it proves, as in 
higher matters, that some philosophical reflection is re- 
quired to determine on the usefulness, or the practical 
ability, of every object which comes in the shape of 
novelty or innovation. Could we conceive that man 
had never discovered the practice of washing his hands, 
but cleansed them as animals do their paws, he would for 
certain have ridiculed and protested against the inventor 
of soap, and as tardily, as in other matters, have adopted 
the invention. A reader, unaccustomed to minute research- 
es, might be surprised, had he laid before him the history 
of some of the most familiar domestic articles which, in 
their origin, incurred the ridicule of the wits, and had to 
pass through no short ordeal of time in the strenuous 
opposition of the zealots against domestic novelties. 
The subject requires no grave investigation ; we will, 



DOMESTIC NOVELTIES AT FIRST CONDEMNED. 403 

therefore, only notice a few of universal use. They will 
sufficiently demonstrate that, however obstinately man 
moves in " the march of intellect," he must be overtaken 
by that greatest of innovators — Time itself; and that, 
by his eager adoption of what he had once rejected, and 
by the universal use of what he once deemed unuseful, 
he will forget, or smile at the difficulties of a former 
generation, who were baffled in their attempts to do 
what we all are now doing. 

• Foeks are an Italian invention ; and in England were 
so perfect a novelty in the days of Queen Bess, that 
Fynes Moryson, in his curious "Itinerary," relating a 
bargain with the patrone of a vessel which was to convey 
him from Venice to Constantinople, stipulated to be fed 
at his table, and to have " his glass or cup to drink in 
peculiar to himself, with his knife, spoon, and fork." 
This thing was so strange that he found it necessary to 
describe it.* It is an instrument "to hold the meat 

* Modem research lias shown that forks were not so entirely un- 
known as was imagined when the above was written. In vol. xxvii. of 
the "Archaeologia," published by the Society of Antiquaries, is an 
engraving of a fork and spoon of the Anglo-Saxon era ; they were 
found with fragments of ornaments in silver and brass, all of which 
had been deposited in a box, of which there were some decayed re- 
mains ; together with about seventy pennies of sovereigns from Coen- 
wolf, King of Mercia (a.d. 796), to Ethelstan (a.d. 878, 890). The inven- 
tories of royal and noble persons in the middle ages often name forks. 
They were made of precious materials, and sometimes adorned with 
jewels like those named in the inventory of the Duke of Normandy, 
in 1363, "une cuiller d'or et une fourchette, et aux deux fonts deux 
saphirs;" and in the inventory of Charles Y. of France, in 1380, 
" une cuillier et une fourchette d'or, ou il y a ij balays et X perles." 
Their use seems to have been a luxurious appendage to the dessert, to 
lift fruit, or take sops from wine. Thus Piers G-aveston, the celebrated 
favourite of Edward III., is described to have had three silver forks 
to eat pears with; and the Duchess of Orleans, in 1390, had one fork 
of gold to take sops from wine (a prendre la soupe ou vin). They 
appear to have been entirely restricted to this use, and never adopted 
as now, to lift meat at ordinary meals. They were carried about the 



4-64 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

while lie cuts it ; for they hold it ill-manners that one 
should touch the meat with his hands."* At the close 
of the sixteenth century were our ancestors eating as 
the Turkish noblesse at present do, with only the free use 
of their fingers, steadying their meal and conveying it to 
their mouths by their mere manual dexterity. They 
were, indeed, most indelicate in their habits, scattering 
on the table-cloth all their bones and parings. To purify 
their tables, the servant bore a long wooden " voiding- 
knife," by which he scraped the fragments from the table," 
into a basket, called " a voider." Beaumont and Fletcher 
describe the thing, 

They sweep the table with a wooden dagger. 



Fabling Paganism had probably raised into a deity the 
little man who : 
its excellence — 



little man who first taught us, as Ben Jonson describes 



the laudable use of forks, 
To the sparing of napkins. 

This personage is well-known to have been that odd 
compound, Coryat the traveller, the perpetual butt of 
the wits. He positively claims this immortality. "I 
myself thought good to imitate the Italian fashion by 
this forked cutting of meat, not only while I was in 
Italy, but also in Germany, and oftentimes in England 
since I came home." Here the use of forks was, however, 
long ridiculed ; it was reprobated in Germany, where 
some uncleanly saints actually preached against the un- 
natural custom " as an insult on Providence, not to touch 
our meat with our fingers." It is a curious fact, that 
forks were long interdicted in the Congregation de St. 

person in decorated cases, and only used on certain occasions, and 
then only by the highest classes; hence their comparative rarity. — 
Ed. 

* Moryson's "Itinerary," part i., p. 208, 



DOMESTIC NOVELTIES AT EIRST CONDEMNED. 4tf5 

Maur, and were only used after a protracted struggle be- 
tween the old members, zealous for their traditions, and 
the young reformers, for their fingers.* The allusions' to 
the use of the fork, which we find in all the dramatic 
writers through the reigns of James the . First and 
Charles the First, show that it was still considered as a 
strange affectation and novelty. The fork does not ap- 
pear to have been in .general use before the Restoration ! 
On the introduction of forks there appears to have been 
some difficulty in the manner they were to be held and 
used. In The Fox, Sir Politic Would-be, counselling 
Peregrine at Venice, observes — 

Then you must learn the use 
And handling of your silver fork at meals. 

Whatever this art may be, either we have yet to learn 
it, or there is more than one way in which it may be 
practised. D'Archenholtz, in his "Tableau de l'Angle- 
terre," asserts that " an Englishman may be discovered 
anywhere, if he be observed at table, because he places 
his fork upon the left side of his plate ; a Frenchman- 
by using the fork alone without the knife ; and a Ger, 
man, by planting it perpendicularly into his plate ; and 
a Russian, by using it as a toothpick." 

Toothpicks seem to have come in with forks, as younger 
brothers of the table, and seem to have been borrowed 
from the nice manners of the stately Yenetians. This 
implement of cleanliness was, however, doomed to the 
same anathema as the fantastical ornament of " the com- 
plete Signor," the Italianated Englishman. How would 
the writers, who caught " the manners as they rise," 
have been astonished that now no decorous person 
would be unaccompanied by what Massinger in con- 
tempt calls 

Thy case of toothpicks and thy silver fork ! 

* I find this circumstance concerning forks mentioned in the " Dic- 
tionnaircde Trevoux." 
30 



±66 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

Umbrellas, in my youth, were not ordinary things; 
few but the macaroni's of the day, as the dandies were 
then called, would venture to display them. For a long 
while it was not usual for men to carry them without in- 
curring the brand of effeminacy ; and they were vulgarly 
considered as the characteristics of a person whom the 
mob then hugely disliked — namely, a mincing French- 
man. At first a single umbrella seems to have been 
kept at a coffee-house for some extraordinary occasion 
— lent as a coach or chair in a heavy shower — but not 
commonly carried by the walkers. The Female Tatler 
advertises " the young gentleman belonging to the 
custom-house, who, in fear of rain, borrowed the umbrella 
from Wilks > Coffee-house, shall the next time be wel- 
come to the maid's pattens!''' An umbrella carried by a 
man was obviously then considered an extreme effemi- 
nacy. As late as in IV 78, one John Macdonald, a foot- 
man, who has written his own life, informs us, that when 
he carried " a fine silk umbrella, which he had brought 
from Spain, he could not with any comfort to himself use 
it ; the people calling out ' Frenchman ! why don't you 
get a coach ?' " The fact was, that the hackney-coachmen 
and the chairmen, joining with the true esprit de corps, 
were clamorous against this portentous rival. This foot- 
man, in 1778, gives us further information: — "At this 
time there were no umbrellas worn in London, except in 
noblemen's and gentlemen's houses, where "there was a 
large one hung in the hall to hold over a lady or a gen- 
tleman, if it rained, between the door and their carriage." 
His sister was compelled to quit his arm one day, from 
the abuse he drew down on himself by his umbrella. 
But he adds that "he persisted for three months, till 
they took no further notice of this novelty. Foreigners 
began to use theirs, and then the English. Now it is 
become a great trade in London."* The state of our 

* Umbrellas are, however, an invention of great antiquity, and may 



DOMESTIC NOVELTIES AT FIRST CONDEMNED. ^07 

population might now, in some degree, be ascertained by 
the number of umbrellas. 

Coaches, on their first invention, offered a fruitful 
source of declamation, as an inordinate luxury, particu- 
larly among the ascetics of monkish Spain. The Spanish 
biographer of Don John of Austria, describing that 
golden age, the good old times, when they only used 
" carts drawn by oxen, riding in this manner to court," 
notices that it was found necessary to prohibit coaches 
by a royal proclamation, "to such a height was this 
infernal vice got, which has done so much injury to Cas- 
tile." In this style nearly every domestic novelty has 
been attacked. The injury inflicted on Castile by the 
introduction of coaches could only have been felt by the 
purveyors of carts and oxen for a morning's ride. The 
same circumstances occurred in this country. When 
coaches began to be kept by the gentry, or were hired 
out, a powerful party found their " occupation gone !" 
Ladies would no longer ride on pillions behind their foot- 
men, nor would take the air, where the air was purest, on 
the river. Judges and counsellors from their inns would 
no longer be conveyed by water to Westminister Hall, or 
jog on with all their gravity on a poor palfrey. Consid- 
erable bodies of men were thrown out of their habitual 
employments — the watermen, the hackneymen, and the 

be seen in the sculptures of ancient Egypt and Assyria. They are 
also depicted on early Greek vases. But the most curious fact con- 
nected with their use in this country seems to be the knowledge oar 
Saxon ancestors had of them ; though the use, in accordance with the 
earliest custom, appears to have been as a shelter or mark of distinc- 
tion for royalty. In Csedmon's "Metrical Paraphrase of Parts of 
Scripture," now in the British Museum (Harleian MS. No. 603), an 
Anglo-Saxon manuscript of the tenth centmy, is the drawing of a 
king, who has an umbrella held over his head by an attendant, in the 
same way as it is borne over modern eastern kings. The form is pre- 
cisely similar to those now in use, though, as noted above, they were 
an entire novelty when re-introduced in the last century. — Ed. 



468 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

saddlers. Families were now jolted, in a heavy wooden 
machine, into splendour and ruin. The disturbances and 
opposition these coaches created we should hardly now 
have known, had not Taylor, the Water-poet* and man, 
sent down to us an invective against coaches, in 1G23, 
dedicated to all who are grieved with " the world run- 
ning on wheels." 

Taylor, a humorist and satirist, as well as waterman, 
conveys some information in this rare tract of the period 
when coaches began to be more generally used — " "Within 
our memories our nobility and gentry could ride well- 
mounted, and sometimes walk on foot gallantly attended 
with fourscore brave fellows in blue coats, which was a 
glory to our nation far greater than forty of these 
leathern timbrels. Then the name of a coach was heathen 
Greek. Who ever saw, but upon extraordinary occasions, 
Sir Philip Sidney and Sir Francis Drake ride in a coach ? 
They made small use of coaches ; there were but few in 
those times, and they were deadly foes to sloth and 
effeminacy. It is in the memory of many when in the 
whole kingdom there was not one ! It is a doubtful 
question whether the devil brought tobacco into England 
in a coach, for both appeared at the same time." It ap- 
pears that families, for the sake of their exterior show, 
miserably contracted their domestic establishment ; for 
Taylor, the Water-poet, complains that when they used 
formerly to keep from ten to a hundred proper serving- 
men, they now made the best shift, and for the sake of 
their coach and horses had only " a butterfly page, a 
trotting footman, and a stiff-drinking coachman, a cook, 
a clerk, a steward, and a butler, which hath forced an 
army of tall fellows to the gatehouses," or prisons. Of 

* Taylor was originally a Thames waterman, hence the term, 
""Water-poet" given him. His attack upon coaches was published 
with this quaint title, " The world runnes on wheeles, or, odds, betwixt 
carts and coaches." It is an unsparing satire. — Ed. 



DOMESTIC NOVELTIES AT FIRST CONDEMNED. 469 

one of the evil effects of this new fashion of coach-riding 
this satirist of the town wittily observes, that, as soon as 
a man was knighted, his lady was lamed for ever, and 
could not on any account be seen but in a coach. As 
hitherto our females had been accustomed to robust 
exercise, on foot or on horseback, they were now forced 
to substitute a domestic artificial exercise in sawing bil- 
lets, swinging, or rolling the great roller in the alleys of 
their garden. In the change of this new fashion they 
found out the inconvenience of a sedentary life passed in 
their coaches.* 

Even at this early period of the introduction of coaches, 
they were not only costly in the ornaments — in velvets, 
damasks, taffetas, silver and gold lace, fringes of all 
sorts — but their greatest pains were in matching their 
coach-horses. " They must be all of a colour, longitude, 
latitude, cressitude, height, length, thickness, breadth (I 
muse they do not weigh them in a pair of balances) ; and 
when once matched with a great deal of care, if one of 
them chance to die, then is the coach maimed till a meet 
mate be found, whose corresponding may be as equivalent 
to the surviving palfrey, in all respects, as like as a broom 
to a besom, barm to yeast, or codlings to boiled apples." 
This is good natural humour. He proceeds — " They use 



* Stow, in his " Chronicles," has preserved the date of the first in- 
troduction of coaches into England, as well as the name of the first 
driver, and first English coachmaker. "In the year 1564 G-uilliam 
Boonen, a Dutchman, became the queen's coachman, and was the first 
that brought the use of coaches into England. After a while divers 
great ladies, with as great jealousie of the queen's displeasure, made 
them coaches, and rid in them up and down the country, to the great 
admiration of all the beholders; but then, by little and little, they 
grew usual among the nobility and others of sorte, and within twenty 
years became a great trade of coachmaking;" and he also notes that 
in the year of their introduction to England " Walter "Rippon made a 
coche for the Earl of Rutland, which was the first coche that was ever 
made in England." — Ed. 



470 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

more diligence in matching their coach-horses than in the 
marriage of their sons and daughters." A great fashion, 
in its novelty, is often extravagant ; true elegance and 
utility are never at first combined; good sense and 
experience correct its caprices. They appear to have 
exhausted more cost and curiosity in their equipages, on 
their first introduction, than since they have become ob- 
jects of ordinary use. Notwithstanding this humorous 
invective on the calamity of coaches, and that " house- 
keeping never decayed till coaches came into England ; 
and that a ten-pound rent now was scarce twenty shil- 
lings then, till the witchcraft of the coach quickly mounted 
the price of all things." The Water-poet, were he now 
living, might have acknowledged that if, in the changes 
of time, some trades disappear, other trades rise up, 
and in an exchange of modes of industry the nation loses 
nothing. The hands which, like Taylor's, rowed boats, 
came to drive coaches. These complainers on all novel- 
ties, unawares always answer themselves. Our satirist 
affords us a most prosperous view of the condition of 
" this new trade of coachmakers, as the gainfullest about 
the town. They are apparelled in sattins and velvets, 
are masters of the parish, vestrymen, and fare like the 
Emperor Heliogabalus and Sardanapalus — seldom with- 
out their mackeroones, Parmisants (macaroni, with Par- 
mesan cheese, I suppose), jellies and kickshaws, with 
baked swans, pastries hot or cold, red-deer pies, which 
they have from their debtors, worships in the country !" 
Such was the sudden luxurious state of our first great 
coachmakers ! to the deadly mortification of all water- 
men, hackneymen, and other conveyancers of our 
loungers, thrown out of employ ! 

Tobacco. — It was thought, at the time of its introduc- 
tion, that the nation would be ruined by the use of 
tobacco. Like all novel tastes the newly-imported leaf 
maddened all ranks among us. " The money spent in 



DOMESTIC NOVELTIES AT FIRST CONDEMNED. 47 1 

smoke is unknown," said a writer of that day, lamenting 
over this " new trade of tobacco, in which he feared that 
there were more than seven thousand tobacco-houses." 
James the First, in his memorable "Counterblast to 
Tobacco," only echoed from the throne the popular cry ; 
but the blast was too weak against the smoke, and vainly 
his paternal majesty attempted to terrify his liege chil- 
dren that " they were making a sooty kitchen in their 
inward parts, soiling and infecting them with an unctuous 
kind of soot, as hath been found in some great tobacco- 
eaters, that after their death were opened." The infor- 
mation was perhaps a pious fraud. This tract, which 
has incurred so much ridicule, was, in truth, a merito- 
rious effort to allay the extravagance of the moment. 
But such popular excesses end themselves ; and the 
royal author might have left the subject to the town- 
satirists of the day, who found the theme inexhaustible 
for ridicule or invective. 

Coal. — The established use of our ordinary fuel, coal, 
may be ascribed to the scarcity of wood in the environs 
of the metropolis. Its recommendation was its cheap- 
ness, however it destroys everything about us. It has 
formed an- artificial atmosphere which envelopes the great 
capital, and it is acknowledged that a purer air has 
often proved fatal to him who, from early life, has only 
breathed in sulphur and smoke. Charles Fox once said 
to a friend, " I cannot live in the country ; my constitu- 
tion is not strong enough." Evelyn poured out a famous 
invective against "London Smoke." '"Imagine," he 
cries, " a solid tentorium or canopy over London, what a 
mass of smoke would then stick to it ! This fuliginous 
crust now comes down every night on the streets, on our 
houses, the waters, and is taken into our bodies. On the 
water it leaves a thin web or pellicle of dust dancing upon 
the surface of it, as those who bath in the Thames dis- 
cern, and bring home on their bodies." Evelyn has 



472 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

detailed the gradual destruction it effects on every 
article of ornament and price ; and " he hoard in France, 
that those parts lying southwest of England, complain 
of being infected with smoke from our coasts, which 
injured their vines in flower." I have myself observed 
at Paris, that the books exposed to sale on stalls, however 
old they might be, retained their freshness, and were in 
no instance like our own, corroded and blackened, which 
our coal-smoke never fails to produce. There was a pro- 
clamation, so far back as Edward the First, forbidding 
the use of sea-coal in the suburbs, on a complaint of the 
nobility and gentry, that they could not go to London 
on account of the noisome smell and thick air. About 
1550, Hollingshcd foresaw the general use of sea-coal 
from the neglect of cultivating timber. Coal fires have 
now been in general use for three centuries. In the 
country they persevered in using wood and peat. Those 
who were accustomed to this sweeter smell declared that 
they always knew a Londoner, by the smell of his clothes, 
to have come from coal-fires. It must be acknowledged 
that our custom of using coal for our fuel has prevailed 
over good reasons why we ought not to have preferred 
it. But man accommodates himself even to an offensive 
thing whenever his interest j)redominates. 

Were we to carry on a speculation of this nature into 
graver topics, we should have a copious chapter to write 
of the opposition to new discoveries. Medical history 
supplies no unimportant number. On the improvements 
in anatomy by Malpighi and his followers, the senior pro- 
fessors of the university of Bononia were inflamed to such 
a pitch that they attempted to insert an additional clause 
in the solemn oath taken by the graduates, to the effect 
that they would not permit the principles and conclu- 
sions of Hippocrates, Aristotle, and Galen, which had 
been approved of so many ages, to be overturned by any 
person. In phlebotomy we have a curious" instance. 



DOMESTIC NOVELTIES AT FIRST CONDEMNED. 473 

In Spain, to the sixteenth century, they maintained that 
when the pain was on the one side they ought to bleed 
on the other. A great physician insisted on a contrary 
practice; a civil war of opinion divided Spain ; at length 
they had recourse to courts of law ; the novelists were 
condemned ; they appealed to the emperor, Charles the 
Fifth ; he was on the point of confirming the decree of 
the court, when the Duke of Savoy died of a pleurisy, 
having been legitimately bled. This puzzled the em- 
peror, who did not. venture on a decision. 

The introduction of antimony and the Jesuits' bark also 
provoked legislative interference ; decrees and ordinances 
were issued, and a civil war raged among the medical 
faculty, of which Guy Patin is the copious historian. 
Vesalius was incessantly persecuted by the public pre- 
judices against dissection ; Harvey's discovery of the 
circulation of the blood led to so protracted a contro- 
versy, that the great discovery was hardly admitted even 
in the latter days of the old man ; Lady Wortley Mon- 
tague's introduction of the practice of inoculation met 
the same obstinate resistance as, more recently, that of 
vaccination startled the people. Thus objects of the 
highest importance to mankind, on their first appearance, 
are slighted and contemned. Posterity smiles at the 
ineptitude of the preceding age, while it becomes familiar 
with those objects which that age has so eagerly rejected. 
Time is a tardy patron of true knowledge. 

A nobler theme is connected with the principle we 
have here but touched on — the gradual changes in public 
opinion — the utter annihilation of false notions, like 
those of witchcraft, astrology, spectres, and many other 
superstitions of no remote date, the hideous progeny of 
imposture got on ignorance, and audacity on fear. But 
one impostor reigns paramount, the plausible opposition 
to novel doctrines which may be subversive of some 
ancient ones ; doctrines which probably shall one day be 



474 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

as generally established as at present they are utterly 
decried, and which the interests of corporate bodies 
oppose with all their cumbrous machinery; but artificial 
machinery becomes perplexed in its movements when 
worn out by the friction of ages. 



DOMESTICITY; OR, A DISSERTATION ON 
SERVANTS. 

The characteristics of servants have been usually 
known by the broad caricatures of the satirists of every 
age, and chiefly by the most popular — the writers of 
comedy. According to these exhibitions, we must infer 
that the vices of the menial are necessarily inherent to 
his condition, and consequently that this vast multitude 
in society remain ever in an irrecoverably ungovernable 
state. We discover only the cunning depredator of the 
household ; the tip-toe spy, at all corners — all ear, all 
eye : the parasitical knave — the flatterer of the follies, 
and even the eager participator of the crimes, of his 
superior. The morality of servants has not been im- 
proved by the wonderful revelations of Swift's " Direc- 
tions," where the irony is too refined, while it plainly 
inculcates the practice. This celebrated tract, designed 
for the instruction of the masters, is more frequently 
thumbed in the kitchen, as a manual for the profligate 
domestic. Servants have acknowledged that some of 
their base doings have been suggested to them by their 
renowned satirist. 

Bentham imagined, that were all the methods employed 
by thieves and rogues described and collected together, 
such a compilation of their artifices and villanies would 
serve to put us on our guard. The theorist of legisla- 
tion seems often to forget the metaphysical state of man. 
With the vitiated mind, that latent sympathy of evil 



dissert^:::- :/ :i:~_:":- 433 

what fa " 'g Tit never hare been called forth but by the 
don, has often evinced bow too dose an inspection 

of crime nisy ^:: — — t: :r~"".'i_T~ :. c tZ H-sn:-- :: if 
that when some monstrous and nominal crime has been 

: The public, it rarely passes "without a sad 

repetition. A " : -~^ tt_ tIt :l_iiz :: tjlt iz.Te_ie:~ is STmzk. 
and a crime is perpetrated which else had not occurred. 

Listen I-: tie . :™sels — "_:."_ :i: :: -_t '_- :r z~i~ei 
brother, more stnpid hut n : : - -— : .:i: :'_. :. i_n 1- i: I 

take the passim t::i_ :'_;.' . in_:.:~ •?- 1: ::me- 

dy. in T^enTy-nxe ad 1 the z _:>(mish JBomxL It was no 
doubt designed to expose the arts and selfishness of the 
dome — e should Zt. . .- -'..--'...- ' 1 

was as gene: /. by -. .: -:l:s u S— _z~'s Idiec- 

— 
^ " : n 'A your master with :"_: . : : : . '_ = '_ 1 : yilry : 1 i 
ignorant honesty, ihiniing t: zni zrTzriess :z : filsf 
fanndiT::n. is m:?: :: Tlesf ziisTers -_.— ■ ■ ";--: ::- 
Gain fiends, which is 3 ;.::_:.; : 1 i 1: -lt. : : _^ . Li— 
lire not on hopes relying :z It : 1 : ziise= : zi: s- 
ters. The masters lore :_::t :1t__— >t- -Li :_tT t :~- 
ants,nor :.: 'A-~ -. _:i- 1 ;. :__t 1_>t 1;-t :ttz1: St:~itits 
to bear to themsr."~T- L:~. "-srzhiT; :- l:s: '-'.-2 - — 
rewards are gro^n :t.t :: ;.i:t Z-riy rue is n;— ::: 
himself, and makes the "; s s: L s . . __ : : . i •: s- :~ -'. . 
■..-. serving his turn, and ti .:. ::: - :h- 7 . _ _: :: 1: The 
same, for they art less in ; v'. s:; nee Thy ziisTe: is rue 
who befools his servants, and wears them out to the very 
stomps, looking for nraeL. :.:... - :hei: i . _. : ■ Z hy 
mastei sannot be tmyfrifiii. stt:1 Liz-re:: .- :-: ihe:e .: 
: e and eonditi: : . : - . :i y : : ~ 

This pss sage, written two centaries ago, wonld and an 
echo of its sentiments in many a. mnA»m ^l naprfif , These 
notions ar- :: :. :: Lit:: its . :._ ::: __ ~ : . . '.. ■-..- YT* 
trace them from Terence and Plautus, as well as Swift 
and Mandeville. Our latter srrt . : 



476 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

fill picture of the state of the domestics, when it scorns 
" they had experienced professors among them, who 
could instruct the graduates in iniquity seven hundred 
illiberal arts how to cheat, impose upon, and find out the 
blind side of their masters." The footmen, in Mande- 
ville's day, had entered into a society together, and made 
laws to regulate their wages, and not to carry burdens 
above two or three pounds weight, and a common fund 
was provided to maintain any suit at law against any 
rebellious master. This seems to be a confederacy which 
is by no means dissolved. 

Lord Chesterfield advises his son not to allow his upper 
man to doff his livery, though this valet was to attend 
his person, when the toilet was a serious avocation re- 
quiring a more delicate hand and a nicer person than he 
who was to walk before his chair, or climb behind his 
coach. This searching genius of philosophy and les 
petites moeurs solemnly warned that if ever this man were 
to cast off the badge of his order, he never would resume 
it. About this period the masters were menaced by a 
sort of servile war. The famous farce of High Life be- 
low Stairs exposed with great happiness the impudence 
and the delinquencies of the parti-coloured clans. It 
roused them into the most barefaced opposition ; and, as 
ever happens to the few who press unjust claims on the 
many, in the result worked the reform they so greatly 
dreaded.* One of the grievances in society was then an 

* The farce was produced in 1759, when it was the custom to admit 
an}- servant in livery free to the upper gallery, as they were supposed 
to be in attendance on their masters. Their foibles and dishonesty 
being so completely hit off in the play incensed them greatly ; and 
they created such an uproar that it was resolved to exclude them in 
future. In Edinburgh the opposition to the play produced still greater 
scenes of violence, and the lives of some of the performers were threat- 
ened. It at last became necessary for their masters to stop this out- 
break on the part of their servants ; and alter the whole system of the 
household economy which led to such results. — Ed. 



DISSERTATION ON SERVANTS. 477 

anomalous custom, for it was only practised in our country, 
of a guest being highly taxed in dining with a family whose 
establishment admitted of a numerous train. Watchful 
of the departure of the guest, this victim had to pass along 
a line of domestics, arranged in the hall, each man pre- 
senting the visitor with some separate article, of hat, 
gloves, coat, and cane, claiming their " vails." It would 
not have been safe to refuse even those who, with noth- 
ing to present, still held out the hand, for their attentions 
to the diner-out.* 

When a slave was deemed not a person, but a thing 
marketable and transferable, the single principle judged 
sufficient to regulate the mutual conduct of the master 
and the domestic was, to command and to obey. It 
seems still the sole stipulation exacted by the haughty 
from the menial. But this feudal principle, unalleviated 
by the just sympathies of domesticity, deprives authority 
of its grace, and service of its zeal. To be served well, 
we should be loved a little ; the command of an excellent 
master is even grateful, for the good servant delights to 
be useful. The slave repines, and such is the domestic 
destitute of any personal attachment for his master. 
Whoever "was mindful of the interests of him whose 
beneficence is only a sacrifice to his pomp ? The master 
dresses and wages highly his pampered train ; but this is 

* These vails, supposed to be the free gratuity of the invited to the 
servants of the inviter, were ultimately so managed that persons paid 
servants by that mode only — levying a kind of black-mail on their 
friends, which ran through all society. " The wages are nothing," 
says a noble lady's servant in one of Smollet's novels, " but the vails 
are enormous." The consequence was, that masters and mistresses 
had little control over them ; they are said in some instances to have 
paid for their places, as some servants do at inns, where the situation 
was worth having, owing to the large parties given, and gaming, then 
so prevalent, being well-attended. It was ended by a mutual under- 
standing all over the three kingdoms, after the riots which resulted 
from the production of the play noted above. — Ed. 



478 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

the calculated cost of state-liveries, of men measured by 
a standard, for a Hercules in the Hall, or an Adonis for 

the drawing-room; hut at those linns, when the domestic 
ceases to he, an ohject in the public eve, he sinks into an 
ohject of sordid economy, or of merciless caprice. His 
personal feelings are recklessly neglected. He sleeps 
where there is neither light nor air; he is driven when 
he is already exhausted ; he begins the work of midnight, 
and is confined for hours with men like himself, who fret, 
repine, and curse. They have their tales to compare 
together ; their unhallowed secrets to disclose. The mas- 
ters and the mistresses pass by them in review, and little 
deem they how oft the malignant glance or the malicious 
whisper follow their airy steps. To shorten such tedious 
hours, the servants familiarise themselves with every 
vicious indulgence, for even the occupation of such do- 
mestics is little more than a dissolute idleness. A cell in 
New T gate does not always contain more corruptors than a 
herd of servants congregated in our winter halls. It is 
to be lamented that the modes of fashionable life demand 
the most terrible sacrifices of the health, the happiness, 
and the morals of servants. Whoever perceives that 
he is held in no esteem stands degraded in his own 
thoughts. The heart of the simple throbs with this 
emotion; but it hardens the villain who would rejoice 
to avenge himself: it makes the artful only the more 
cunning; it extorts from the sullen a cold unwilling 
obedience, and it stings even the good-tempered into 
insolence. * 

South, as great a wit as a preacher, has separated, by 
an awful interval, the superior and the domestic. "A 
servant dwells remote from all knowledge of his lord's 
purposes ; he lives as a kind of foreigner under the same 
roof; a domestic, yet a foreigner too." This exhibits a 
picture of feudal manners. But the progress of society 
in modern Europe has since passed through a mighty 



DISSERTATION ON SERVANTS. 479 

evolution. In the visible change of habits, of feelings, 
of social life, the humble domestic has approximated to, 
and communicated more frequently even with " his lord." 
The domestic is now not always a stranger to " his lord's 
purposes," but often their faithful actor — their confiden- 
tial counsellor — the mirror in which his lordship contem- 
plates on his wishes personified. 

This reflection, indeed, would have violated the dignity 
of the noble friend of Swift, Lord Orrery. His lordship 
censures the laughter in " Rabelais' easy chair " for having 
directed such intense attention to affairs solely relating to 
servants. " Let him jest with dignity, and let him be 
ironical upon useful subjects, leaving poor slaves to eat 
their porridge, or drink their small beer, in such vessels as 
they shall think proper." This lordly criticism has drawn 
down the lightning of Sir Walter Scott: — "The noble 
lord's feelings of dignity deemed nothing worthy of atten- 
tion that was unconnected with the highest orders of 
society." Such, in truth, was too long the vicious prin- 
ciple of those monopolists of personal distinction, the 
mere men of elevated rank. 

Metropolitan servants, trained in depravity, are inca- 
pacitated to comprehend how far the personal interests 
of servants are folded up with the interests of the house 
they inhabit. They are unconscious that they have any 
share in the welfare of the superior, save in the degree 
that the prosperity of the master contributes to the base 
and momentary purposes of the servant. But in small 
communities we perceive how the affections of the master 
and the domestic may take root. Look in an ancient re- 
tired family, whose servants often have been born under 
the roof they inhabit, and where the son is serving where 
the father still serves ; and sometimes call the sacred spot 
of their cradle and their grave by the proud and endear- 
ing term of " our house." We discover this in whole 
countries where luxury has not removed the classes of 



4-80 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

society at too wide distances from each other, to deaden 
their sympathies. We behold this in agrestic Switzer- 
land, among its villages and its pastures ; in France, 
among its distant provinces ; in Italy, in some of its de- 
cayed cities ; and in Germany, where simple manners and 
strong aifections mark the inhabitants of certain localities. 
Holland long preserved its primitive customs ; and there 
the love of order promotes subordination, though its free 
institutions have softened the distinctions in the ranks 
of life, and there we find a remarkable evidence of domes- 
ticity. It is not unusual in Holland for servants to call- 
their masters uncle, their mistresses aunt, and the children 
of the family their cousins. These domestics participa- 
ting in the comforts of the family, become naturalized 
and domiciliated ; and their extraordinary relatives are 
often adopted by the heart. An heroic effort of these 
domestics has been recorded ; it occurred at the burning 
of the theatre at Amsterdam, where many rushed into the 
flames, and nobly perished in the attempt to save their 
endeared families. 

It is in limited communities that the domestic virtues 
are most intense ; all concentrating themselves in their 
private circles, in such localities there is no public — no 
public which extorts so many sacrifices from the individ- 
ual. Insular situations are usually remarkable for the 
warm attachment and devoted fidelity of the domestic, 
and the personal regard of families for their servants. 
This genuine domesticity is strikingly displayed in the 
island of Ragusa, on the coast of Dalmatia : for there 
they provide for the happiness of the humble friends 
of the house. Boys, at an early age, are received into 
families, educated in writing, reading, and arithmetic. 
Some only quit their abode, in which they were almost 
born, when tempted by the stirring spirit of maritime 
enterprise. They form a race of men who are much 
sought after for servants ; and the term applied to them 



DISSERTATION ON SERVANTS. 481 

of " Men of the Gulf," is a sure recommendation of char 
acter for unlimited trust and unwearying zeal. 

The mode of providing for the future comforts of their 
maidens is a little incident in the history of benevolence, 
which we must regret is only practised in such limited 
communities. Malte-Brun, in his "Annales des Voy- 
ages," has painted a scene of this nature, which may 
read like some romance of real life. The girls, after a 
service of ten years, on one great holiday, an epoch in 
their lives, receive the ample reward of their good conduct. 
On that happy day the mistress and all the friends of 
the family prepare for the maiden a sort of dowry or 
marriage-portion. Every friend of the house sends some 
article ; and the mistress notes down the gifts, that she 
may return the same on a similar occasion. The dona- 
tions consist of silver, of gowns, of handkerchiefs, and 
other useful articles for a young woman. These tributes 
of friendship are placed beside a silver basin, which con- 
tains the annual wages of the servant ; her relatives from 
the country come, accompanied by music, carrying bas- 
kets covered with ribbons and loaded with fruits, and 
other rural delicacies. They are received by the master 
himself, who invites them to the feast, where the com- 
pany assemble, and particularly the ladies. All the pres- 
ents are reviewed. The servant introduced kneels to 
receive the benediction of her mistress, whose grateful 
task is then to deliver a solemn enumeration of her good 
qualities, concluding by announcing to the maiden that, 
having been brought up in the house, if it be her choice 
to remain, from henceforward she shall be considered as 
one of the family. Tears of affection often fall during 
this beautiful scene of true domesticity, which terminates 
with a ball for the servants, and another for the supe- 
riors. The relatives of the maiden return homewards 
with their joyous musicians; and, if the maiden prefers 
her old domestic abode, she receives an increase of wages, 

31 



i<2 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

and at a succeeding period of six years another jubilee 
provides her second good fortune. Lei me tell one more 
8tory of the influence of this passion of domesticity in the 
servant ; —its merit equals its uovelty. In that inglori- 
ous attack on Buenoi Ayres, where our brave soldiers 
were disgraced by a recreant general, the negroes, flares 
as they were, joined the inhabitants to expel the inva- 
ders. On this signal occasion the city decreed a public 
expression of their gratitude to the negroes, in a sort of 
triumph, ami at the same time awarded the freedom of 
eighty of their leaders. One of them, haying shown his 
claims to the boon, declared, thai to obtain his freedom 

had all his days formed the proud object of his wishes: 
his claim was indisputable 5 yet now, however, to the 
amazement of the judges, he refused his proffered free- 
dom ! The reason be alleged was a singular refinement 
of heartfelt sensibility: — "My kind mistress," said the 
negro, " once wealthy, has fallen into misfortunes in her 
infirm old age. I work to maintain her, and at intervals 
of leisure she leans on my arm to take the evening air. 
I will not be tempted to abandon her, and I renounce the 
hope of freedom that she may know she possesses a slave 
who never will quit her side." 

Although I have been travelling out of Europe to fur 
nish some striking illustrations of the powerful emotioi* 
of domesticity, it is not that we are without instances in 
the private history of families among ourselves. I have 
known more than one where the servant has chosen to 
live without wages, rather than quit the master or the 
mistress in their decayed fortunes; and another where 
the servant cheerfully worked to support her old lady to 
her last day. 

Would we look on a very opposite mode of servitude, 
turn to the United States. No system of servitude was 
ever so preposterous. A crude notion of popular free- 
dom in the equality of ranks abolished the very designa- 



DISSERTATION ON SERVANTS. 483 

tion of "servant," substituting the fantastic term of 
" helps." If there be any meaning left in this barbarous 
neologism, their aid amounts to little ; their engagements 
are made by the week, and they often quit their domicile 
without the slightest intimation. 

Let none, in the plenitude of pride and egotism, 
imagine that they exist independent of the virtues of 
their domestics. The good conduct of the servant 
stamps a character on the master. In the sphere of 
domestic life they must frequently come in contact with 
them. On this subordinate class, how much the happi- 
ness and even the welfare of the master may rest ! The 
gentle offices of servitude began in his cradle, and await 
him at all seasons and in all spots, in pleasure or in peril. 
Feelingly observes Sir Walter Scott — " In a free country 
an individual's happiness is more immediately connected 
with the personal character of his valet, than with that 
of the monarch himself." Let the reflection not be 
deemed extravagant if I venture to add, that the habit- 
ual obedience of a devoted servant is a more immediate 
source of personal comfort than even the delightfulness 
of friendship) and the tenderness of relatives — for these 
are but periodical ; but the unbidden zeal of the domes- 
tic, intimate with our habits, and patient of our way- 
wardness, labours for us at all hours. It is those feet 
which hasten to us in our solitude ; it is those hands 
which silently administer to our wants. At what period 
of life are even the great exempt from the gentle offices 
of servitude ? 

Faithful servants have never been commemorated by 
more heartfelt affection than by those whose pursuits re- 
quire a perfect freedom from domestic cares. Persons of 
sedentary occupations, and undisturbed habits, abstracted 
from the daily business of life, must yield unlimited trust 
to the honesty, while they want the hourly attentions 
and all the cheerful zeal, of the thoughtful domestic. 



48i LITERARY CHARACTER. 

The mutual affections of the master and the servant have 
often been exalted into a companionship of feelings. 

When Madame de Genlis heard that Pope had raised 
a monument not only to his father and to his mother, but 
also to the faithful servant who had nursed his earliest 
years, she was so suddenly struck by the fact, that she 
declared that " This monument of gratitude is the more 
remarkable for its singularity, as I know of no other in- 
stance." Our churchyards would have afforded her a 
vast number of tomb-stones erected by grateful masters 
to faithful servants;"* and a closer intimacy with the 
domestic privacy of many public characters might have 
displayed the same splendid examples. The one which 
appears to have so strongly affected her may be found 
on the east end of the outside of the parish church of 
Twickenham. The stone bears this inscription : — 

To the memory of 

Mary Beach, 

who died November 5, 1725, aged 18. 

Alexander Pope, 

whom she nursed in his infancy, 

and constantly attended for thirty-eight years, 

Erected this stone 

In gratitude to a faithful Servant. 

The original portrait of Shenstone was the votive gift 
of a master to his servant, for, on its back, written by 
the poet's own hand, is the following dedication : — " This 
picture belongs to Mary Cutler, given her by her master, 
William Shenstone, January 1st, 1754, in acknowledgment 
of her native genius, her magnanimity, her tenderness, and 
her fidelity. — W. S." We might refer to many similar* 
evidences of the domestic gratitude of such masters to 
old and attached servants. Some of these tributes may 
be familiar to most readers. The solemn author of the 

* Even our modern cemeteries perpetuate this feeling, and exhibit 
many grateful Epitaphs on Servants. 



DISSERTATION ON SERVANTS. 485 

" Night Thoughts " inscribed an epitaph over the grave 
of his man-servant ; the caustic Gilford poured forth an 
effusion to the memory of a female servant, fraught with 
a melancholy tenderness which his muse rarely indulged. 
The most pathetic, we had nearly said, and had said 
justly, the most sublime, development of this devotion 
of a master to his servant, is a letter addressed by that 
powerful genius Michael Angelo to his friend Vasari, on 
the death of Urbino, an old and beloved servant.* Pub- 
lished only in the voluminous collection of the letters of 
Painters, by Bottari, it seems to have escaped general 
notice. We venture to translate it in despair : for we 
feel that we must weaken its masculine yet tender elo- 
quence. 

MICHAEL ANGELO TO VASAEI. 

" My deae Geoege, — I can but write ill, yet shall not 
your letter remain without my saying something. You 
know how Urbino has died. Great was the grace of God 
when he bestowed on me this man, though now heavy 
be the grievance and infinite the grief. The grace was 
that when he lived he kept me living ; and in dying he 
has taught me to die, not in sorrow and with regret, but 
with a fervent desire of death. Twenty and six years 
had he served me, and I found him a most rare and faith- 
ful man ; and now that I had made him rich, and ex- 
pected to lean on him as the staff and the repose of my 
old age, he is taken from me, and no other hope remains 
than that of seeing him again in Paradise. A sign of 

*It is delightful to note the warm affection displayed by the great 
sculptor toward his old servant on his death-bed. The man who 
would beard princes and the pope himself, when he felt it necessary to 
assert his independent character as an artist, and through life evinced 
a somewhat hard exterior, was soft as a child in affectionate attention 
to his dying domestic, anticipating all his wants by a personal attend- 
ance at his bedside. This was no light service on the part of Michael 
Angelo, who was himself at the time eighty-two years of age. — Ed. 



480 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

God was this happy death to him ; yet, even more than 
this death, were his regrets increased to leave me in this 
world the wretch of many anxieties, since the better half 
of myself has departed with him, and nothing is left for 
me than this loneliness of life." 

Even the throne lias not been too far removed from 
this sphere of humble humanity, for we discover in St. 
George's Chapel a mural monument erected by order 
of one of our late sovereigns as the memorial of a female 
servant of a favourite daughter. The inscription is a 
tribute of domestic affection in a royal bosom, where an 
attached servant became a cherished inmate. 

King George III. 

Caused to be interred near this place the body of 

Mary Gascoigxe, 

Servant to the Princess Amelia ; 

and this stone 

to be inscribed in testimony of his grateful sense 

of the faithful services and attachment 

of an amiable young woman to 

his beloved Daughter. 

This deep emotion for the tender offices of servitude is 
not peculiar to the refinement of our manners, or to 
modern Europe; it is not the charity of Christianity 
alone which has hallowed this sensibility, and confessed 
this equality of affection, which the domestic may par- 
ticipate : monumental inscriptions, raised by grateful 
masters to the merits of their slaves, have been preserved 
in the great collections of Grsevius and Grater.* 

* There are several instances of Roman heads of houses who con- 
secrate "to themselves and their servants 1 ' the sepulchres they erect 
in their own lifetime, as if in death they had no desire to be divided 
from those who had served them faithfully. An instance of affection- 
ate regard to the memory of a deceased servant occurs in the collec- 
tion at Nismes; it is an inscription by one Sextus Arius Yarcis, to 
Hermes, " his best servant " (servo optimo). Fabretti has preserved 
an inscription which records the death of a child, T. Alfacius Scanti- 



LETTERS IN THE VERNACULAR IDIOM. 487 



PRINTED LETTERS IN THE VERNACULAR 
IDIOM. 

Printed Letteks, without any attention to the selec- 
tion, is so great a literary evil, that it has excited my curi- 
osity to detect the first modern who obtruded such formless 
things on public attention. I conjectured that, whoever 
he might be, he would be distinguished for his egotism 
and his knavery. My hypothetical criticism turned out to 
be correct. Nothing less than the audacity of the unblush- 
ing Piero Aretino could have adventured on this pro- 
ject ; he claims the honour, and the critics do not deny it, 
of being the first who published Italian letters. Aretino 
had the hardihood to dedicate one volume of his letters to 
the King of England, another to the Duke of Florence ; a 
third to Hercules of Este, a relative of Pope Julius Third 
— evidently insinuating that his letters were worthy to 
be read by the royal and the noble. 

Among these letters there is one addressed to Mary, 
Queen of England, on her resuscitation of the ancient 
faith, which offers a very extraordinary catalogue of the 
ritual and ceremonies of the Romish church. It is in- 
deed impossible to translate into Protestant English the 
multiplied nomenclature of offices which involve human 
life in never-ceasing service. As I know not where we 
can find so clear a perspective of this amazing contri- 
vance to fetter with religious ceremonies the freedom of 
the human mind, I present the reader with an accurate 
translation of it : — 



anius, by one Alfacius Severus, his master, by which, it appears he 
was the child of an old servant, who was honoured by bearing the 
prenomen of the master, and who is also styled in the epitaph " his 
sweetest freedman " (liberto dulcissimo). — Ed. 



488 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

" Pletro Aretino to the Queen of England* 

"The voices of Psalms, the sound of Canticles, the 
breatli of Epistles and the Spirit of Gospels, had need 
unloose the language of ray words in congratulating 
y<mr superhuman Majesty OD having not only restored 
conscience to the minds and hearts of Englishmen and 
taken deceitful heresy away from them, but on bringing 
it to pass, when it was least hoped for, that charity and 
faith were again born and raised up in them ; on which 
sudden conversion triumphs our sovereign Pontiff Julius, 
the College, and the whole of the clergy, so that it seems 
in Rome as if the shades of the old Caesars with visible 
effect showed it in their very statues; meanwhile the 
pure mind of his most blessed Holiness canonizes you, 
and marks you in the catalogue among the Catharines 
and Margarets, and dedicates you," &c. 

" The stupor of so stupendous a miracle is not the 
stupefaction of stupid wonder; and all proceeds from 
your being in the grace of God in every deed, whose 
incomprehensible goodness is pleased with seeing you, 
in holiness of life and innocence of heart, cause to be 
restored in those proud countries, solemnity to Easters, 
abstinence to Lents, sobriety to Fridays, parsimony to 
Saturdays, fulfilment to vows, fasts to vigils, observances 
to seasons, chrism to creatures, unction to the dying, 
festivals to saints, images to churches, masses to altars, 
lights to lamps, organs to quires, benedictions to olives, 
robings to sacristies, and decencies to baptisms ; and 
that nothing may be wanting (thanks to your pious" and 
most entire nature), possession has been regained to 
offices, of hours ; to ceremonies, of incense ; to reliques, 
of shrines ; to the confessed, of absolutions ; to priests, of 
habits ; to preachers, of pulpits ; to ecclesiastics, of pre- 
eminences ; to scriptures, of interpreters ; to hosts, of 
communions ; to the poor, of alms ; to the wretched, of 



LETTERS IN THE VERNACULAR IDIOM. 489 

hospitals ; to virgins, of monasteries ; to fathers, of con- 
vents ; to the clergy, of orders ; to the defunct, of obse- 
quies ; to tierces, noons, vespers, complins, ave-maries, 
and matins, the privileges of daily and nightly bells." 

The fortunate temerity of Aretino gave birth to sub- 
sequent publications by more skilful writers. Mcolo 
Franco closely followed, who had at first been the aman-- 
uensis of Aretino, then his rival, and concluded his liter- 
ary adventures by being hanged at Rome ; a circum- 
stance which at the time must have occasioned regret 
that Franco had not, in this respect also, been an imita- 
tor of his original, a man equally feared, flattered, and 
despised. 

The greatest personages and the most esteemed writers 
of that age were perhaps pleased to have discovered a 
new and easy path to fame ; and since it was ascertained 
that a man might become celebrated by writings never 
intended for the press, and which it was never imagined 
could confer" fame on the writers, volumes succeeded 
volumes, and some authors are scarcely known to pos- 
terity but as letter-writers. We have the too-elaborate 
epistles of Bembo, secretary to Leo X., and the more 
elegant correspondence of Annibal Caro ; a work which, 
though posthumous, and published by an affectionate 
nephew, and therefore too undiscerning a publisher, is a 
model of familiar letters. 

These collections, being found agreeable to the taste 
of their readers, novelty was courted by composing let- 
ters more expressly adapted to public curiosity. The 
subjects were now diversified by critical and political 
topics, till at length they descended to one more level 
with the faculties, and more grateful to the passions of 
the populace of readers — Love! Many grave person- 
ages had already, without being sensible of the ridicu- 
lous, languished through tedious odes and starch sonnets. 
Doni, a bold literary projector, who invented a literary 



490 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

review both of printed and manuscript works, with not 
inferior ingenuity, published his love-letters ; and with the 

felicity of an Italian diminutive, he fondly entitled them 

"Pistolette Amorose del Doni," 1552, 8vo. These Pis- 
tole were designed to be little epistles, or billetwloux 
bu1 Doni was one of those fertile authors who have too 
little time of their own to compose Bhorl works. Doni 
was too facetious to be sent iniental, and his quill was not 
plucked from the wing of Love. He was followed by a 
graver pedant, who threw a heavy offering on the altat 
of the Graces ; Parabosco, who in six books of " Letterc 
Amorose," 15G5, 8vo, was too phlegmatic to sigh over Ins 
inkstand. 

Denina mentions Lewis Pasqualigo of Venice as an 
improver of these amatory epistles, by introducing a 
deeper interest and a more complicate narrative. Par- 
tial to the Italian literature, Denina considers this author 
as having given birth to those novels in the form of Ut- 
ters, with which modern Europe has been inundated; 
and he refers the curious in literary researches, for the 
precursors of these epistolary novels, to the works 
of those Italian wits who flourished in the sixteenth 
century. 

" The Worlds " of Doni, and the numerous whimsical 
works of Ortensio Landi, and the " Circe " of Gelli, of 
which w r e have more than one English translation, which, 
under their fantastic inventions, cover the most profound 
philosophical views, have been considered the precursors 
of the finer genius of " The Persian Letters," that fertile 
mother of a numerous progeny, of D'Argens and others. 

The Italians are justly proud of some valuable collec- 
tions of letters, which seem peculiar to themselves, and 
which may be considered as the works of artists. They 
have a collection of " Lettere di Tredici Domini Illustri," 
which appeared in 1571 ; another more curious, relating 
to princes — " Lettere de' Principi le quali o si scrivono 



LETTERS IN THE VERNACULAR IDIOM. 491 

da Principi a Principi, o ragionano di Principi ;" Venezia, 
1581, in 3 vols, quarto. 

But a treasure of this kind, peculiarly interesting to 
the artist, has appeared in more recent times, in seven 
quarto volumes, consisting of the original letters of the 
great painters, from the golden age of Leo X., gradually 
collected by Bottari, who published them in separate 
volumes. They abound in the most interesting facts rela- 
tive to the arts, and display the characteristic traits of 
their lively writers. Every artist will turn over with 
delight and curiosity these genuine effusions ; chronicles 
of the days and the nights of their vivacious brothers. 

It is a little remarkable that he who claims to be the 
first satirist in the English language, claims also, more 
justly perhaps, the honour of being the first author who 
published familiar letters. In the dedication of his 
Epistles to Prince Henry, the son of James the First, 
Bishop Hall claims the honour of introducing " this new 
fashion of discourse by epistles, new to our language, 
usual to others ; and as novelty is never without plea of 
use, more free, more familiar." Of these epistles, in six 
decades, many were written during his travels. We have 
a collection of Donne's letters abounding with his pecu- 
liar points, at least witty, if not natural. 

As we became a literary nation, familiar letters served 
as a vehicle for the fresh feelings of our first authors. 
Howell, whose Epistolse bears his name, takes a wider 
circumference in " Familiar Letters, domestic and foreign, 
historical, political, and philosophical, upon emergent oc- 
casions." The "emergent occasions" the lively writer 
found in his long confinement in the Fleet — that English 
Parnassus ! Howell is a wit, who, in writing his own 
history, has written that of his times ; he is one of the 
few whose genius, striking in the heat of the moment 
only current coin, produces finished medals for the cabi- 
net. His letters are still published. The taste which 



492 LITERARY CHARACTER. 

had now arisen for collecting letters, induced Sir Tobie 
Mathews, in 1G60, to form a volume, of which many, if 
not all, are genuine productions of their different wri- 
ters. 

The dissipated elegance of Charles II. inspired freedom 
in letter-writing. The royal emigrant had caught the 
tone of Voiture. We have some few letters of the wits 
of this court, but that school of writers, having sinned 
in gross materialism, the reaction produced another of a 
more spiritual nature, in a romantic strain of the most 
refined sentiment. Volumes succeeded volumes from 
pastoral and heroic minds. Katherine Philips, in the 
masquerade-dress of " The Matchless Orinda," addressed 
Sir Charles Cottrel, her grave " Poliarchus ;" while Mrs. 
Behn, in her loose dress, assuming the nymph-like form of 
" Astrsea," pursued a gentleman, concealed in a domino, 
under the name of " Lycidas." 

Before our letters reached to nature and truth, they 
were strained by one more effort after novelty ; a new 
species appeared, " From the Dead to the Living," by 
Mrs. Rowe : they obtained celebrity. She was the first 
who, to gratify the public taste, adventured beyond the 
Styx ; the caprice of public favour has returned them to 
the place whence they came. 

The letters of Pope were unquestionably written for 
the public eye. Partly accident, and partly persevering 
ingenuity, extracted from the family chests the letters of 
Lady Mary Wortley Montague, who long remained the 
model of letter-writing. The letters of Hughes and 
Shenstone, of Gray, Cowper, Walpole, and others, self- 
painters, whose indelible colours have given an imperish- 
able charm to these fragments of the human mind, may 
close our subject ; printed familiar letters now enter into 
the history of our literature. 



AN INQUIRY 



DfTO THE 

LITERARY AND POLITICAL CHARACTER OF 
JAMES THE FIRST; 

INCLUDING A SKETCH OF HIS AGE. 



" The whole reign of James I. has been represented by a late cele- 
brated pen (Burnet) to have been a continued course of mean practices ; 
and others, who have professedly given an account of it, have filled 
their works with libel and invective, instead of history. Both King 
James and his ministers have met with a treatment from posterity 
highly unworthy of them, and those who have so liberally bestowed 
their censures were entirely ignorant of the true springs and causes of 
the actions they have undertaken to represent." — Sawyer's Preface to 
" Winwood's Memorials." 

" II y auroit un excellent livre a faire sur les injustices, les OUBUS, 

et les CALOMNIES HISTORIQUES." — AfADAlTE DE GENUS. 



ADVERTISEMENT 



The present inquiry originates in an affair of literary 
conscience. Many years ago I set off in the world with 
the popular notions of the character of James the First ; 
but in the course of study, and with a more enlarged 
comprehension of the age, I was frequently struck by the 
contrast of his real with his apparent character ; and I 
thought I had developed those hidden and involved 
causes which have so long influenced modern writers in 
ridiculing and vilifying this monarch. 

This historical trifle is, therefore, neither a hasty deci- 
sion, nor a designed inquiry ; the results gradually arose 
through successive periods of time, and, were it worth 
the while, the history of my thoughts, in my own pub- 
lications, might be arranged in a sort of chronological 
conviction.* 

It would be a cowardly silence to shrink from encoun- 
tering all that popular prejudice and party feeling may 
oppose ; this were incompatible with that constant search 
after truth which we may at least expect from the retired 
student. 

I had originally limited this inquiry to the literary 
character of the monarch ; but there was a secret con- 
nexion between that and his political conduct ; and that 
again led me to examine the manners and temper of the 
times, with the effects which a peace of more than twenty 
years operated on the nation. I hope that the freshness 
of the materials, often drawn from contemporary writings 

* I hare described the progress of my opinions in " Curiosities of Literature," 
vol. i., p. 461, last edition. 



496 ADVERTISEMENT. 

which have never been published, may in some respect 
gratify cariosity. Of the political character of James the 
First opposite tempers will form opposite opinions ; the 
friends of peace and humanity will consider that the 
greatest happiness of the people is that of possessing a 
philosopher on the throne; Let profounder inquirers here- 
after discover why those princes are Buspected of being 
but weak nun, who are the true fathers of their people ; 
let them too inform us, whether we are to asorib 
Janus the First, as well as to Marcus Antoninus, the 
disorders of their reign, or place them to the ingratitude 
and wantonness of mankind. 



\ 



AN INQUIET 



DTTO THE 



LITERARY AND POLITICAL CHARACTER OF 
JAMES THE FIRST; 

INCLUDING A SKETCH OP HIS AGE. 



If sometimes the learned entertain false opinions and 
traditionary prejudices, as well as the people, they how- 
ever preserve among themselves a paramount love of 
truth, and the means to remove errors, which have es- 
caped their scrutiny. The occasion of such errors may 
be complicate, but, usually, it is the arts and passions of 
the few which find an indolent acquiescence among the 
many, and firm adherents among those who so eagerly 
consent to what they do not dislike to hear. 

A remarkable instance of this appears in the character 
of James the First, which lies buried under a heap of 
ridicule and obloquy ; yet James the First was a literary 
monarch at one of the great eras of English literature, 
and his contemporaries were far from suspecting that his 
talents were inconsiderable, even among those who had 
their reasons not to like him. The degradation which 
his literary character has suffered has been inflicted by 
more recent hands ; and it may startle the last echoer of 
Pope's " Pedant-reign " to hear that more wit and wisdom 
have been recorded of James the First than of any one 
of our sovereigns. 
32 



498 CHARACTER OF JAMES THE FIRST. 

An " Author-Sovereign," as Lord Shaftesbury, in his 

anomalous but emphatic Btyle, terms this class of writers, 
is placed between a double eminence of honours, aud 
must incur the double perils; he will receive no favour 
from his brothers, the Faineants, as a whole race of 
ciphers in succession on the throne of France were de- 
nominated, and who find it much more easy to despise 
than to acquire ; while his other brothers, the republicans 
of literature, want a heart to admire the man who has 
resisted the perpetual seductions of a court-life for the 
silent labours of his closet. Yet if Alphonsus of Arragon 
be still a name endeared to us for his love of literature, 
and for that elegant testimony of his devotion to study 
expressed by the device on his banner of an open book, 
how much more ought we to be indulgent to the memory 
of a sovereign who has written one still worthy of being 
opened ? 

We must separate the literary from the political char- 
acter of this monarch, and the qualities of his mind and 
temper from the ungracious and neglected manners of 
his personal one. And if we do not take a more familiar 
view of the events, the parties, and the genius of the 
times, the views and conduct of James the First will 
still remain imperfectly comprehended. In the reign of 
a prince who was no military character, we must busy 
ourselves at home ; the events he regulated may be nu- 
merous and even interesting, although not those which 
make so much noise and show in the popular page of his- 
tory, and escape us in its general views. The want of 
this sort of knowledge has proved to be one great source 
of the false judgments passed on this monarch. Surely 
it is not philosophical to decide of another age by the 
changes and the feelings through which our own has 
passed. There is a chronology of human opinions 
which, not observing, an indiscreet philosopher may 
commit an anachronism in reasoning. 



V 



PIEST ASSAILANTS OF JAMES THE FIRST. 499 

When the Stuarts "became the objects of popular in- 
dignation, a peculiar race of libels was eagerly dragged 
into light, assuming the imposing form of history ; many 
of these state-libels did not even pass through the press, 
and may occasionally be discovered in their MS. state. 
Yet these publications cast no shade on the talents of 
James the First. His literary attainments were yet un- 
disputed ; they were echoing in the ear of the writers, 
and many proofs of his sagacity were still lively in their 
recollections. 



THE FIRST MODERN" ASSAILANTS OF THE 
CHARACTER OF JAMES THE FIRST. 

Btje^et, the ardent champion of a party so deeply con- 
cerned to oppose as well the persons as the principles of 
the Stuarts, levelled the father of the race ; we read with 
delight pages which warm and hurry us on, mingling 
truths with rumours, and known with suggested events, 
with all the spirit of secret history. But the character 
of James I. was to pass through the lengthened inquisi- 
torial tortures of the sullen sectarianism of Harris.* It 

* The historical works of Dr. William Harris have been recently 
republished in a collected form, and they may now be considered as 
entering into our historical stores. 

Harris is a curious researcher ; but what appears more striking in 
his historical character, is the impartiality with which he quotes 
authorities which make against his own opinions and statements. 
Yet is Harris a writer likely to impose on many readers. He an- 
nounces in his title-pages that his works are " after the manner of Mr. 
Bayle." This is but a literary imposition, for Harris is perhaps the 
meanest writer in our language both for style and philosophical think- 
ing. The extraordinary impartiality he displays in his faithful quota- 
tions from writers on opposite sides is only the more likely to deceive 
us ; for by that unalterable party feeling, which never forsakes him, 
the facts against him he studiously weakens by doubts, surmises, and 
suggestions; a character sinks to the level of his notions by a single 



500 CHARACTER OP JAMES THE FIRST. 

was branded by the fierce, remorseless republican, Cath- 
arine Macaulay, and flouted by the light, sparkling 
Whig, Horace Walpole.* A senseless cry of pedantry 

stroke; and from the arguments adverse to his purpose, he wrests the 
most violent inferences. All party writers must submit to practise 
such mean and disingenuous arts if they affect to disguise themselves 
under a cover of impartiality. Bayle, intent on collecting facts, was 
indifferent to their results ; but Harris is more intent on the deductions 
than the facts. The truth is, Harris wrote to plea.se his patron, the 
republican Hollis, who supplied him with books, and every friendly 
aid. " It is possible for an ingenious man to be of a party without 
being partial" says Rushworth ; an airy clench on the lips of a sober 
matter-of-fact man looks suspicious, and betrays the weak pang of a 
half-conscience. 

* Horace "Walpole's character of James I., in his "Royal Authors," 
is as remarkable as his character of Sir Philip Sidney ; he might have 
written both without any acquaintance with the works he has so 
maliciously criticised. In his account of Sidney he had silently passed 
over the "Defence of Pjetry;" and in his second edition he makes 
this insolent avowal, that "he had forgotten it; a proof that I at least 
did not think it sufficient foundation for so high a character as he ac- 
quired." Every reader of taste knows the falseness of the criticism, 
and how heartless the polished cynicism that could dare it. I repeat, 
what I have elsewhere said, that Horace TTalpole had something in 
his composition more predominant than his wit, a cold, unfeeling dis- 
position, which contemned all literary men, at the moment his heart 
secretly panted to partake of their fame. 

Nothing can be more imposing than his volatile and caustic criti- 
cisms on the works of James I.; yet it appears to me that he had 
never opened that folio volume he so poignantly ridicules. Por he 
doubts whether these two pieces, "The Prince's Cabala" and "The 
Duty of a King in his Royal Office," were genuine productions of 
James I. The truth is, they are both nothing more than extracts 
printed with those separate titles, drawn from the King's " Basilicon 
Doron." He had probably neither read the extracts nor the original. 
Thus singularity of opinion, vivacity of ridicule, and polished epi- 
grams in prose, were the means by which this noble writer startled 
the world by his paradoxes, and at length lived to be mortified at a 
reputation which he sported with and lost. I refer the reader to 
those extracts from his MS. letters which are in " Calamities of Au- 
thors," where he has made his literary confessions, and performs his 
act of penance. 



PEDANTRY OF JAMES THE FIRST. 501 

had been raised against him by the eloquent invective of 
Bolingbroke, from whom doubtless Pope echoed it in 
verse which has outlived his lordship's prose : — 

Oh, cried the goddess, for some pedant reign ! 
Some gentle James to bless the land again ; 
To stick the doctor's chair into the throne, 
Give law to words, or war with words alone, 
Senates and courts with Greek and Latin rule, 
And turn the council to a grammar-school ! 

Dunciad, book iv. ver. 1*75. 



THE PEDANTRY OF JAMES THE FIRST. 

Few of my readers, I suspect, but have long been per- 
suaded that James L was a mere college pedant, and 
that all his works, whatever they may be, are monstrous 
pedantic labours. Yet this monarch of all things de- 
tested pedantry, either as it shows itself in the mere 
form of Greek and Latin, or in ostentatious book-learn- 
ing, or in the affectation of words of remote signification : 
these are the only points of view in which I have been 
taught to consider the meaning of the term pedantry, 
which is very indefinite, and always a relative one. 

The age of James I. was a controversial age, of un- 
settled opinions and contested principles ; an age, in 
which authority was considered as stronger than opin- 
ion ; but the vigour of that age of genius was infused 
into their writings, and those citers, who thus perpet- 
ually crowded their margins, were profound and original 
thinkers. When the learning of a preceding age becomes 
less recondite, and those principles general which were 
at first peculiar, are the ungrateful heirs of all this 
knowledge to reproach the fathers of their literature 
with pedantry? Lord Bolingbroke has pointedly said 
of James I. that " his pedantry was too much even for 



502 CHARACTER OF JAMES THE FIRST. 

the age in which lie lived." His lordship knew little 
of that glorious age when the founders of our literature 
flourished. It had been over-clouded by the French 
court of Charles II., a race of unprincipled wits, and the 
revolution-court of William, heated by a new faction, 
too impatient to discuss those principles of government 
which they had established. It was easy to ridicule 
what they did not always understand, and very rarely 
met with. But men of far higher genius than this mon- 
arch, Selden, Usher, and Milton, must first be condemned 
before this odium of pedantry can attach itself to the 
plain and unostentatious writings of James L, who, it is 
remarkable, has not scattered in them those oratorical 
periods, and elaborate fancies, which he indulged in his 
speeches and proclamations. These loud accusers of the 
pedantry of James were little aware that the king has 
expressed himself with energy and distinctness on this 
very topic. His majesty cautions Prince Henry against 
the use of any " corrupt leide, as book-language, and perv- 
and-inkhom termes, and, least of all, nignard and effemi- 
nate ones." One passage may be given entire as com- 
pletely refuting a charge so general, yet so unfounded. 
" I would also advise you to write in " your own language, 
for there is nothing left to be said in Greek and Latine 
already ; and, ynewe (enough) of poore schollers would 
match you in these languages ; and besides that it best 
becometh a King, to purine and make famous his owne 
tongue ; therein he may goe before all his subjects, as it 
setteth him well to doe in all honest and lawful things." 
No scholar of a pedantic taste could have dared so com- 
plete an emancipation from ancient, yet not obsolete pre- 
judices, at a time when many of our own great authors 
yet imagined there was no fame for an Englishman 
unless he neglected his maternal lano'ua^e for the arti- 
ficial labour of the idiom of ancient Rome. Bacon had 
even his own domestic Essays translated into Latin ; and 



HIS POLEMICAL STUDIES. 503 

tlie king found a courtier-bishop to perform the same 
task for his majesty's writings. There was something 
prescient in this view of the national language, by the 
king, who contemplated in it those latent powers which 
had not yet burst into existence. It is evident that the 
line of Pope is false which describes the king as intend- 
ing to rule " senates and courts " by " turning the coun- 
cil to a grammar-school." 



HIS POLEMICAL STUDIES. 

This censure of the pedantry of James is also con- 
nected with those studies of polemical divinity, for which 
the king has incurred much ridicule from one party, who 
were not his contemporaries ; and such vehement invec- 
tive from another, who were ; who, to their utter dis- 
may, discovered their monarch descending into their 
theological gymnasium to encounter them with their 
own weapons. 

The affairs of religion and politics in the reign of 
James I., as in the preceding one of Elizabeth,* were iden- 
tified together ; nor yet have the same causes in Europe 
ceased to act, however changed or modified. The gov- 
ernment of James was imperfectly established while his 
subjects were wrestling with two great factions to ob- 
tain the predominance. The Catholics were disputing 
his title to the crown, which they aimed to carry into 
the family of Spain, and had even fixed on Arabella 
Stuart, to marry her to a Prince of Parma; and the 

* I have more largely entered into the history of the party who at- 
tempted to subvert the government in the reign of Elizabeth, and who 
published their works under the assumed name of Martin Mar-prelate, 
than had hitherto been done. In our domestic annals that event and 
those personages are of some importance and curiosity ; but were im- 
perfectly known to the popular writers of our history. — See " Quar- 
rels of Authors," p. 296. et scq. 



504: CHARACTER OF JAMES TITE FIRST. 

Puritans would have abolished even sovereignty itself; 
these parties indeed were not able to take the field, but 
all felt equally powerful with the pen. Hence an age of 
doctrines. When a religious body has grown into pow- 
er, it changes itself into a political one; the chiefs are 
flattered by their Btrength and stimulated by their am 
bition; but a powerful body in the State cannot remain 
stationary, and a divided empire it disdains. Religious 
controversies have therefore been usually coverings to 
mask the political designs of the heads of parties. 

"We smile at James the First threatening the States- 
general by the English Ambassador about Vorstius, a 
Dutch professor, who had espoused the doctrines of Ar- 
minius, and had also vented some metaphysical notions 
of his own respecting the occult nature of the Divinity. 
He was the head of the Remonstrants, who were at open 
war with the party called the Contra-Remonstrants. 
The ostensible subjects were religious doctrines, but the 
concealed one was a struggle between Pensionary Bar- 
nevelt, aided by the French interest, and the Prince of 
Orange, supported by the English ; even to our own days 
the same opposite interests existed, and betrayed the 
Republic, although religious doctrines had ceased to be 
the pretext.* 

* Pensionary Barn evelt, in his seventy-second year,, was at length 
brought to the block. Diodati. a divine of Geneva, made a miserable 
pun on the occasion ; he said that " the Canons of the Synod of Dort 
had taken off the head of the advocate of Holland." This pun, says 
Brandt in his curious " History of the Reformation," is very injurious 
to the Synod, since it intimates that the Church loves blood. It never 
entered into the mind of these divines that Barnevelt fell, not by the 
Synod, but by the Orange and English party prevailing against the 
French. Lord Hardwicke, a statesman and a man of letters, deeply 
conversant with secret and public history, is a more able judge than 
the ecclesiastical historian or the Swiss divine, who could see nothing 
in the Synod of Dort but what appeared in it. It is in Lord Hard- 
wicke's preface to Sir Dudley Carleton's "Letters" that his lordship 
has made this important discovery. 



HIS POLEMICAL STUDIES. 505 

What was passing between the Dutch Prince and the 
Dutch Pensionary, was much like what was taking place 
between the King of England and his own subjects. 
James I. had to touch with a balancing hand the Catho- 
lics and the Nonconformists,* — to play them one against 
another ; but there was a distinct end in their views. 
" James I.," says Burnet, " continued always writing and 
talking against Popery, but acting for it." The King 
and the bishops were probably more tolerant to mon- 
archists and prelatists, than to republicans and presbyters. 
When James got nothing but gunpowder and Jesuits 
from Rome, he was willing enough to banish, or suppress, 
but the Catholic families were ancient and numerous; 
and the most determined spirits which ever subverted a 
government were Catholic.f Yet what could the King 

* James did all lie could to weaken the Catholic party by dividing 
them in opinion. "When Dr. Reynolds, the head of the Nonconform- 
ists, complained to the 'king of the printing and dispersing of Popish 
pamphlets, the king answered that this was done by a warrant from 
the Court, to nourish the schism between the Seculars and Jesuits, 
which was of great service. "Doctor," added the king, "you are a 
better clergyman than statesman." — Neale's " History of the Puritans," 
vol. i., p. 416, 4to. 

f The character and demeanour of the celebrated G-uy or Guido 
Pawkes, who appeared first before the council under the assumed 
name of Johnson, I find in a MS. letter of the times, which contains 
some characteristic touches not hitherto published. This letter is from 
Sir Edward Hoby to Sir Thomas Edmondes, our ambassador at the 
court of Brussels — dated 19th Nov., 1605. " One Johnson was found 
in the vault where the Gunpower Plot was discovered. He was asked 
if he was sorry ? He answered that he was only sorry it had not 
taken place. He was threatened that he should die a worse death 
than he that killed the Prince of Orange ; he answered, that he could 
bear it as well. "When Johnson was brought to the king's presence, 
the king asked him how he could conspire so hideous a treason against 
his children and so many innocent souls who had never offended him ? 
He answered, that dangerous diseases required a desperate remedy ; 
and he told some of the Scots that his intent was to have blown them 
back again into Scotland !" — Mordacious Guy Fawkes ! 



506 CHARACTER OF JAMES THE FIRST. 

expect from the party of the Puritans, and their "con- 
ceited parity," as he called it, should he once throw him- 
self into their hands, but the fate his son received from 
them ? 

In the early stage of the Reformation, the Catholic 
still entered into the same church with the Reformed; 
this common union was broken by the unpolitical impa- 
tience of the court of Koine, who, jealous of the tranquil- 
lity of Elizabeth, hoped to weaken her government by 
disunion;* but the Reformed were already separating 
among themselves by a new race, who, fancying that 
their religion was still too Catholic, were for reforming 
the Reformation. These had most extravagant fancies, 
and were for modelling the government according to each 
particular mams notion. Were we to bend to the for- 
eign despotism of the Roman Tiara, or that of the repub- 
lican rabble of the Presbytery of Geneva ? 



POLEMICAL STUDIES WERE POLITICAL. 

It was in these times that James I., a learned prince, 
applied to polemical studies ; properly understood, these 
-were in fact political ones. Lord Bolingbroke says, "He 
affected more learning than became a king, which he 
broached on every occasion in such a manner as would 



* Sir Edward Coke, attorney-general, in the trial of Garnet the 
Jesuit, says, "There were no Recusants in England — all came to 
church howsoever Popishly inclined, till the Bull of Pius V. excommu- 
nicated and deposed Elizabeth. On this the Papists refused to join in 
the public service. — "State Trials," vol. 1., p. 242. 

The Pope imagined, by false impressions he had received, that the 
Catholic party was strong enough to prevail against Elizabeth. After- 
wards, when he found his error, a dispensation was granted by him- 
self and his successor, that all Catholics might show outward obedience 
to Elizabeth till a happier opportunity. Such are Catholic politics and 
Catholic faith I 



THE HAMPTON-COURT CONFERENCE. 507 

have misbecome a schoolmaster." Would the politician 
then require a half-learned king, or a king without any 
learning at all? Our eloquent sophist appears not to 
have recollected that polemical studies had long with us 
been considered as royal ones ; and that from a slender 
volume of the sort our sovereigns still derive the regal 
distinction of " Defenders of the Faith." The pacific 
government of James I. required that the king himself 
should be a master of these controversies to be enabled 
to balance the conflicting parties ; and none but a learned 
king could have exerted the industry or attained to the 
skill. 



THE HAMPTON-COURT CONFERENCE. 

In the famous conference at Hampton Court, which the 
King held with the heads of the Nonconformists, we see 
his majesty conversing sometimes with great learning and 
sense, but oftener more with the earnestness of a man, 
than some have imagined comported with the dignity of 
a crowned head. The truth is, James, like a true student, 
indulged, even to his dress, an utter carelessness of 
parade, and there was in his character a constitutional 
warmth of heart and a jocundity of temper which did 
not always adapt it to state-occasions ; he threw out his 
feelings, and sometimes his jests. James, who had 
passed his youth in a royal bondage, felt that these 
Nonconformists, while they were debating small points, 
were reserving for hereafter their great ones ; were 
cloaking their republicanism by their theology, and, like 
all other politicians, that their ostensible were not their 
real motives.* Harris and Neal, the organs of the 

* In political history we usually find that the heads of a party are 
much wiser than the party themselves, so that, whatever they intend 



508 CHARACTER OF JAMES THE FIRST. 

Nonconformists, inveigh against James; even Home, 
with the philosophy of the eighteenth century, lias 
pronounced that the king was censurable " for entering 
zealously into these frivolous disputes of theolog 
Lord Bolingbroke declares that the king held this con- 
ference " in haste to show his parts." Thus a man of 
genius substitutes suggestion and assertion for accuracy 
of knowledge. In the present instance, it was an attempt 
of the Puritans to try the king on his arrival in England ; 
they presented a petition for a conference, called " The 
Millenary Petition,"* from a thousand persons supposed 
to have signed it ; the king would not refuse it ; but so 
far from being " in haste to show his parts," that when 
he discovered their pretended grievances were so futile, 
"he complained that he had been troubled with such 

to acquire, their first demands are small ; but the honest souls who 
are only stirred by their own innocent zeal, are sure to complain that 
their business is done negligently. Should the party at first succeed, 
then the bolder spirit, which they have disguised or suppressed 
through policy, is left to itself; it starts unbridled and at full gallop. 
All this occurred in the case of the Puritans. We find that some of the 
rigid Nonconformists did confess in a pamphlet, "The Christian's 
modest offer of the Silenced Ministers," 1606, that those who were 
appointed to speak for them at Hampton Court were not of their 
nomination or judgment; they insisted that these delegates should 
declare at once against the w r hole church establishment, &c, and model 
the government to each particular man's notions ! But these delegates 
prudently refused to acquaint the king with the conflicting opinions of 
their constituents. — Lansdowne MSS. 1056, 51. 

This confession of the Nonconformists is also acknowledged by their 
historian Neale, vol. ii., p. 419, 4to edit. 

* The petition is given at length in Collier's " Eccles. Hist.," voL ii. 
p. 672. At this time also the Lay Catholics of England printed at 
Douay, " A Petition Apologetical," to James I. Their language is 
remarkable: they complained they were excluded "that supreme 
court of parliament first founded by and for Catholike men. was 
furnished with Catholike prelates, peeres, and personages ; and so 
continued till the times of Edward VI. a childe, and Queen Elizabeth 
a woman." — Dodd's " Church History." 



THE HAMPTON-COURT CONFERENCE. 509 

importunities, when some more private, course might 
have been taken for their satisfaction." 

The narrative of this once celebrated conference, 
notwithstanding the absurdity of the topics, becomes in 
the hands of the entertaining Fuller a picturesque and 
dramatic composition, where the dialogue and the 
manners of the speakers are after the life. 

In the course of this conference we obtain a familiar in- 
tercourse with the king ; we may admire the capacity of 
the monarch whose genius was versatile with the subjects ; 
sliding from theme to theme with the ease which only 
mature studies could obtain; entering into the graver 
parts of these discussions ; discovering a ready knowl- 
edge of biblical learning, which would sometimes throw 
itself out with his natural humour, in apt and familiar 
illustrations, throughout indulging his own personal 
feelings with an unparalleled naivete. 

The king opened the conference with dignity ; he said 
" he was happier than his predecessors, who had to alter 
what they found established, but he only to confirm 
what was well settled." One of the party made a 
notable discovery, that the surplice was a kind of 
garment used by the priests of Isis. The king observed 
that he had no notion of this antiquity, since he had 
always heard from them that it was " a rag of 
popery." "Dr. Reynolds," said the king, with an 
ah* of pleasantry, " they used to wear hose and shoes in 
times of popery ; have you therefore a mind to go bare- 
foot?" Reynolds objected to the words used in matri- 
mony, " with my body I thee worship." The king said 
the phrase was an usual English term, as a gentleman of 
worship >, <fcc., and turning to the doctor, smiling, said, 
" Many a man speaks of Robin Hood, who never shot 
in his bow ; if you had a good wife yourself, you would 
think all the honour and worship you could do to 
her were well bestowed." Reynolds was not satisfied 



510 CHARACTER OF JAMES TIIE FIRST. 

on the 37th article, declaring that "the Bishop of 
Rome hath no authority in this land," and desired it 
should be added, " nor ought to have any." In Bar- 
low's narrative we find that on this his majesty heartily 
laughed — a laugh easily caught up by the lords; but 
the king nevertheless condescended to reply sensibly 
to the weak objection. 

" What speak you of the pope's authority here ? Ha- 
bemus jure quod habemus / and therefore inasmuch as it 
is said he hath not, it is plain enough that he ought not 
to have." It was on this occasion that some " pleasant 
discourse passed," in which " a Puritan " was defined to 
be a " Protestant frightened out of his wits." The king 
is more particularly vivacious when he alludes to the oc- 
currences of his own reign, or suspects the Puritans of 
republican notions. On one occasion, to cut the gordian- 
knot, the king royally decided — " I will not argue that 
point with you, but answer as kings in parliament, Le 
Roy s* avisem" 

When they hinted at a Scottish Presbytery the king 
was somewhat stirred, yet what is admirable in him (says 
Barlow) without a show of passion. The king had lived 
among the republican saints, and had been, as he said, 
" A king without state, without honour, without order, 
where beardless boys would brave us to our face ; and, 
like the Saviour of the world, though he lived among 
them, he was not of them." On this occasion, although 
the king may not have " shown his passion," he broke 
out, however, with a naive effusion, remarkable for paint- 
ing after the home-life a republican government. It must 
have struck Hume forcibly, for he has preserved part of 
it in the body of his history. Hume only consulted Ful- 
ler. I give the copious explosion from Barlow : — 

" If you aim at a Scottish Presbytery, it agreeth as 
well with monarchy as God and the devil. Then Jack, 
and Tom, Will, and Dick, shall meet, and at their pleas- 



THE HAMPTON-COURT CONFERENCE. 51 1 

ure censure me and my council, and all our proceedings ; 
then Will shall stand up and say, It must be thus ; then 
Dick shall reply, Nay, marry, but we will have it thus. 
And therefore here T must once more reiterate my former 
speech, Le Boy s'avisera. Stay, I pray you, for one seven 
years before you demand that of me, and if then you find 
me pursy and fat, I may hearken to you ; for let that 
government once be up, I am sure I shall be kept in 
breath ; then shall we all of us have work enough : but, 
Dr. Reynolds, till you find that I grow lazy, let that 
alone." 

The king added, 

" I will tell you a tale : — Knox flattered the queen- 
regent of Scotland that she was supreme head of all the 
church, if she suppressed the popish prelates. But how 
long, trow ye, did this continue ? Even so long, till, by 
her authority, the popish bishops were repressed, and he 
himself, and his adherents, were brought in and well 
settled. Then, lo ! they began to make small account of 
her authority, and took the cause into their own hands." 

This was a pointed political tale, appropriately told in 
the person of a monarch. 

The king was never deficient in the force and quickness 
of his arguments. Even Neale, the great historian of the 
Puritans, complaining that Dean Barlow has cut off some 
of the king's speeches, is reluctantly compelled to tax 
himself with a high commendation of the monarch, who, 
he acknowledges, on one of the days of this conference, 
spoke against the corruptions of the church, and the 
practices of the prelates, insomuch that Dr. Andrews, 
then dean of the chapel, said that his majesty did that 
day wonderfully play the Puritan.* The king, indeed, 

* The bishops of James I. were, as Fuller calls one of them, "potent 
courtiers," and too worldly-minded men. Bancroft was a man of vehe- 
ment zeal, but of the most grasping avarice, as appears by an epigram- 
matic epitaph on his death in Arthur Wilson — 



512 CHARACTER OF JAMES THE FIRST. 

was seriously inclined to an union of parties. More than 

once he silenced the angry tongue of Bancroft, and tem- 
pered the zeal of others; and even commended when he 
could Dr. Reynolds, the chief of the Puritans; the king 

consented to the only two important articles that side 
suggested; a new catechism adapted to the people — 
" Let the weak be informed and the wilful he punished," 
said the king; and that new translation of the Bible 
which forms our present version. " But," added the 
king, "it must be without marginal notes, for the 
Geneva Bible is the worst for them, full of seditious con- 
ceits ; Asa is censured for only deposing his mother for 
idolatry, and not kiUiny her." Thus early the dark spirit 
of Machiavel had lighted on that of the ruthless Calvin. 
The grievances of our first dissenters were futile — their 
innovations interminable ; and we discover the king's 
notions, at the close of a proclamation, issued after this 

" Here lies his grace, in cold earth clad, 
"Who died with want of what he had." 

We find a characteristic trait of this Bishop of London in this confer- 
ence. When Ellesmere, Lord Chancellor, observed that " livings 
rather want learned men, than learned men livings, many in the uni- 
versities pining for want of places. I wish, therefore, some may have 
single coats (one living), before others have doublets (pluralities), and 
this method I have observed in bestowing the king's benefices." Ban- 
croft replied, " I commend your memorable care that way ; but a 
doublet is necessary in cold weather." Thus an avaricious bishop could 
turn off, with a miserable jest, the open avowal of his love of plurali- 
ties. Another, Neile, Bishop of Lincoln, when any one preached who 
was remarkable for his piety, desirous of withdrawing the king's at- 
tention from truths he did not wish to have his majesty reminded of, 
would in the sermon-time entertain the king with a merry tale, which 
the king would laugh at, and tell those near him, that he could not 
hear the preacher for the old — bishop ; prefixing an epithet explicit 
of the character of these merry tales. Kennet has preserved for us 
the "rank relation," as he calls it; not, he adds, but " we have had 
divers hammerings and conflicts within us to leave it out." — Kennet's 
" History of England," ii. 729. 



THE HAMPTON-COURT CONFERENCE. 513 

conference : " Such is the desultory levity of some peo- 
ple, that they are always languishing after change and 
novelty, insomuch that were they humoured in their in- 
constancy, they would expose the public management, 
and make the administration ridiculous." Such is the 
vigorous style of James the First in his proclamations ; 
and such is the political truth, which will not die away 
with the conference at Hampton Court. 

These studies of polemical divinity, like those of the 
ancient scholastics, were not to be obtained without a 
robust intellectual exercise. James instructed his son 
Charles,* who excelled in them; and to those studies 

* That the clergy were somewhat jealous of their sovereign's inter- 
ference in these matters may he traced. When James charged the 
chaplains, who were to wait on the prince in Spain, to decline, as far 
as possible, religious disputes, he added, that " should any happen, 
my son is able to moderate in them." The king, observing one of the 
divines smile, grew warm, vehemently affirming, " I tell ye, Charles 
shall manage a point in controversy with the best studied divine of 
ye all." What the king said was afterwards confirmed on an extra- 
ordinary occasion, in the conference Charles I. held with Alexander 
Henderson, the old champion of the kirk. Deprived of books, which 
might furnish the sword and pistol of controversy, and without a 
chaplain to stand by him as a second, Charles I. fought the theological 
duel ; and the old man, cast down, retired with such a sense of the 
learning and honour of the king, in maintaining the order of opisco- 
pacy in England, that his death, which soon followed, is attributed to 
the deep vexation of this discomfiture. The veteran, who had suc- 
ceeded in subverting the hierarchy in Scotland, would not be apt to 
die of a fit of conversion ; but vexation might be apoplectic in an old 
and sturdy disputant. The king's controversy was published; and 
nearly all the writers agree he carried the day. Yet some divines 
appear more jealous than grateful ; Bishop Kennet, touched by the 
esprit du corps, honestly tells us, that "some thought the king had been 
better able to protect the Church, if he had not disputed for it." This 
discovers all the ardour possible for the establishment, and we are to 
infer that an English sovereign is only to fight for his churchmen. 
But there is a nobler office for a sovereign to perform in ecclesiastical 
history — to promote the learned and the excellent, and repress the 
dissolute and the intolerant. 
33 



514 CHARACTER OF JAMES THE FIRST. 

Whitelockc attributes that aptitude of Charles \. which 
made him so skilful a summer-up of argument*, and 
endowed him with so elear a perception in giving his 
decisions. 



THE WORKS OF JAMES THE FIRST. 

We now turn to the writings of James the First. He 
composed a treatise on demoniacs and witches ; those 
dramatic personages in courts of law. James and his 
council never Buspected that those ancient foes to man- 
kind could be dismissed by a simple Nolle prosequi. "A 
Commentary on the Revelations," which was a favourite 
speculation then, and on which greater geniuses have 
written since his day. "A Counterblast to Tobacco!" 
the title more ludicrous than the design.* His majesty 

* Not long before James composed his treatise on " Daemonologie,'' 
the learned VTierus had published an elaborate work on the subject 
" De proestigiis Dcemonum et incantationibus et Veneficiis" &c, 1568. He 
advanced one step in philosophy by discovering that many of the sup- 
posed cases of incantation originated in the imagination of these sor- 
cerers — but he advanced no farther, for he acknowledges the real dia- 
bolical presence. The physician who pretended to cure the disease, 
was himself irrecoverably infected. Yet even this single step of 
Wierus was strenuously resisted by the learned Bodin, who, in his 
amusing volume of " Demonomanie des Sorciers," 1593, refutes Wierua. 
These are the leading* authors of the times; who were followed by a 
crowd. Thus James I. neither wanted authorities to quote nor great 
minds to sanction his "Daemonologie," first published in 1597. To the 
honour of England, a single individual, Reginald Scot, with a genius 
far advanced beyond his age, denied the very existence of those 
witches and demons, in the curious volume of his "Discover}- of 
"Witchcraft," 1584. His books were burned 1 and the author was him- 
self not quite out of danger; and Yoetius, says Bayle, complains that 
when the work was translated into Dutch, it raised up a number of 
libertines who laughed at all the operations and the apparitions of 
devils. Casaubon and Crlanvil, who wrote so much later, treat Scot 
with profound contempt, assuring us his reasonings are childish, and 
his philosophy absurd 1 Such was the reward of a man of genius core- 



THE WORKS OE JAMES THE FIRST. 515 

terrified "the tobacconists," as the patriarchs of smoking- 
clubs were called, and who were selling their very lands 
and houses in an epidemical madness for " a stinking 
weed," by discovering that " they were making a sooty 
kitchen in their inward parts." * And the king gained a 
point with the great majority of his subjects, when he 
demonstrated to their satisfaction that the pope was anti- 
christ. Ridiculous as these topics are to us, the works 
themselves were formed on what modern philosophers 
affect to term the principle of utility ; a principle which, 
with them indeed, includes everything they approve of, 
and nothing they dislike. 

It was a prompt honesty of intention to benefit his 
people, which seems to have been the urgent motive that 
induced this monarch to become an author, more than 
any literary ambition ; for he writes on no prepared or 
permanent topic, and even published anonymously, and 
as he once wrote " post-haste," what he composed or 
designed for practical and immediate use ; and even in 

bating with popular prejudices! Even so late as 1681, these popular 
superstitions were confirmed by the narrations and the philosophy of 
G-lanvil Dr. More, &c. The subject enters into the "Commentaries 
on the Laws of England." An edict of Louis XIV. and a statute by 
George IL made an end of the whole Diablerie. Had James I. adopted 
the system of Reginald Scot, the king had probably been branded as 
an atheist king ! 

* Harris, with systematic ingenuity against James I., after abusing 
this tract as a wretched performance, though himself probably had 
written a meaner one — quotes the curious information the king gives 
of the enormous abuse to which the practice of smoking was carried, 
expressing his astonishment at it. Yet, that James may not escape 
bitter censure, he abuses the king for levying a heavy tax on it to pre- 
vent this ruinous consumption, and his silly policy in discouraging such 
a branch of our revenues, and an article so valuable to our plantations, 
&c. As if James I. could possibly incur censure for the discoveries of 
two centuries after, of the nature of this plant ! James saw great 
families ruined by the epidemic madness, and sacrificed the revenues 
which his crown might derive from it, to assist its suppression. This 
was patriotism in the monarch. 



516 CHARACTER OF JAMES THE FIRST. 

that admirable treatise on the duties of a sovereign, 
which he addressed to Prince Henry, a great portion is 
directed to the exigencies of the times, the parties, and 
the circumstances of his own court. Of the works now 
more particularly noticed, their interest lias ceased with 
the melancholy follies which at length have passed 
away ; although the philosophical inquirer will not 
choose to drop this chapter in the history of mankind. 
But one met in favour of our royal author is testified by 
the honest Fuller and the cynical Osborne. On the 
king's arrival in England, having discovered the numer- 
ous impostures and illusions which he had often referred 
to as authorities, he grew suspicious of the whole system, 
of " Damionologie," and at length recanted it entirely. 
With the same conscientious zeal James had written the 
book, the king condemned it ; and the sovereign separa- 
ted himself from the author, in the cause of truth ; but 
the clergy and the parliament persisted in making the 
imaginary crime felony by the statute, and it is only a 
recent act of parliament which has forbidden the appear- 
ance of the possessed and the spae-wife. 

But this apology for having written these treatises 
need not rest on this fact, however honourably it appeals 
to our candour. Let us place it on higher ground, and 
tell those who asperse this monarch for his credulity and 
intellectual weakness, that they themselves, had they 
lived in the reign of James I., had probably written on 
the same topics, and felt as uneasy at the rumour of a 
witch being a resident in their neighbourhood ! 



POPULAR SUPERSTITIONS OF THE AGE. 

This and the succeeding age were the times of omens 
and meteors, prognostics and providences — of " da*7-fo- 



POPULAR SUPERSTITIONS OP THE AGE. 51 7 

tality," or the superstition of fortunate and unfortunate 
days, and the combined powers of astrology and magic. 
It was only at the close of the century of James I. that 
Bayle wrote a treatise on comets, to prove that they had 
no influence in the cabinets of princes ; this was, how- 
ever, done with all the precaution imaginable. The 
greatest minds were then sinking under such popular 
superstitions : and whoever has read much of the private 
history of this age will have smiled at their ludicrous 
terrors and bewildered reasonings. The most ordinary 
events were attributed to an interposition of Providence. 
In the unpublished memoirs of that learned antiquary, 
Sir Symonds D'Ewes, such frequently occur. When a 
comet appeared, and D'Ewes, for exercise at college, had 
been ringing the great bell, and entangled himself in the 
rope, which had nearly strangled him, he resolves not to 
ring while the comet is in the heavens. When a fire 
happened at the Six Clerks' Office, of whom his father 
was one, he inquires into the most prominent sins of the 
six clerks : these were the love of the world, and doing 
business on Sundays : and it seems they thought so 
themselves; for after the fire the office-door was fast 
closed on the Sabbath. When the Thames had an 
unusual ebb and flow, it was observed, that it had never 
happened in their recollection, but just before the rising 
of the Earl of Essex in Elizabeth's reign, — and Sir 
Symonds became uneasy at the political aspect of affairs. 
All the historians of these times are very particular in 
marking the bearded beams of blazing stars ; and the 
first public event that occurs is always connected with 
the radiant course. Arthur Wilson describes one which 
preceded the death of the simple queen of James I. It 
was generally imagined that " this great light in the 
heaven was sent as a flambeaux to her funeral ;" but the 
historian discovers, while " this blaze was burning, the 
fire of war broke out in Bohemia." It was found difficult 



51 S CHARACTER OF JAMES THE FIRST. 

to decide between the two opinions; and Rushworth, 
who wrote long afterwards, carefully chronicles both. 
The truth is, the greatest geniuses of the age of Jai 
L were as deeply concerned in these investigations as 
his Majesty. Had the great Verulani emancipated him- 
self from all the dreams of his age? He speaks indeed 
cautiously of witchcraft, hut does not deny its occult 
agency; and of astrology he is rather for the improve- 
ment than the rejection. The bold spirit of Rawleigh 
contended with the superstitions of the times; but how- 
feeble is the contest where we fear to strike ! Even 
Rawleigh is prodigal of his praise to James for the king's 
chapter on magic. The great mind of Rawleigh per- 
ceived how much men are formed and changed by <<Juca- 
tion ; but, were this principle admitted to its extent, 
the stars would lose their influence ! In pleading for 
the free agency of man, he would escape from the perni- 
cious tendency of predestination, or the astral influence, 
which yet he allows. To extricate himself from the 
dilemma, he invents an analogical reasoning of a royal 
power of dispensing with the laws in extreme cases; so 
that, though he does not deny " the binding of the stars," 
he declares they are controllable by the will of the 
Creator. In this manner, fettered by prevalent opinions, 
he satisfies the superstitions of an astrological age, and 
the penetration of his own genius. At a much later 
period Dr. Henry More, a writer of genius, confirmed 
the ghost and demon creed, by a number of facts, as 
marvellously pleasant as any his own poetical fancy could 
have invented. Other great authors have not less dis- 
tinguished themselves. When has there appeared a 
single genius who at once could free himself of the tra- 
ditional prejudices of his contemporaries — nay, of his 
own party ? Genius, in its advancement beyond the 
intelligence of its own age, is but progressive ; it is fanci- 
fully said to soar, but it only climbs. Yet the minds of 



HIS HABITS THOSE OF A MAN OF LETTERS. 519 

some authors of this age are often discovered to be supe- 
rior to their work; because the mind is impelled by its 
own inherent powers, but the work usually originates 
in the age. James I. once acutely observed, how " the 
author may be wise, but the work foolish." 

Thus minds of a higher rank than our royal author had 
not yet cleared themselves out of these clouds of popular 
prejudices. We now proceed to more decisive results of 
the superior capacity of this much ill-used monarch. 



THE HABITS OF JAMES THE FIRST THOSE 
OF A MAN OF LETTERS. 

The habits of life of this monarch were those of a man 
of letters. His first studies were soothed by none of their 
enticements. If James loved literature, it was for itself; 
for Buchanan did not tinge the rim of the vase with 
honey; and the bitterness was tasted not only in the 
draught, but also in the rod. In some princes, the harsh 
discipline James passed through has raised a strong aver- 
sion against literature. The Dauphin, for whose use was 
formed the well-known edition of the classics, looked on 
the volumes with no eye of love. To free himself of his 
tutor, Huet, he eagerly consented to an early marriage. 
" Now we shall see if Mr. Huet shall any more keep me 
to ancient geography !" exclaimed the Dauphin, rejoic- 
ing in the first act of despotism. This ingenuous sally, it 
is said, too deeply affected that learned man for many 
years afterwards. Huet's zealous gentleness (for how 
could Huet be too rigid ?) wanted the art which Bu- 
chanan disdained to practise. But, in the case of the 
prince of Scotland, a constitutional timidity combining 
with an ardour for study, and therefore a veneration for 
his tutor, produced a more remarkable effect. Such was 
the terror which the remembrance of this illustrious but 



520 CHARACTER 0? JAMES THE FIRST. 

inexorable republican 1< ft on the imagination of his royal 
pupil, that even so late as when James was Beated on 
the English throne, once the appearance of his frowning 
tutor in a dream greatly agitated the king, who in vain 
attempted to pacify him in this portentous vision. This 
extraordinary fact may be found in a manuscript letter 
of that day.* 

James, even by the confession of hi- hitler satirist, 
Francis Osborne, u dedicated rainy weather to his 
standish, and fair to his hounds." His life had the 
uniformity of a student's; hut the regulated life of a 
learned monarch must have weighed down the gay and 
dissipated with the deadliest monotony. Hence one of 
these courtiers declared that, if lie were to awake after a 
sleep of seven years' continuance, lie would undertake to 

* The learned Mode wrote the present letter soon after another, 
which had not been acknowledged, to his friend Sir M. Stutcville ; and 
the writer is uneasy lest the political secrets of the day might bring 
the parties into trouble. It seems he was desirous that letter should 
be read and then burnt. 

'•March 31, 1G22. 

11 1 hope my letter miscarried not ; if it did I am in a sweet pickle. 
1 desired to hear from you of the receipt and extinction of it. Though 
there is no danger in my letters whilst report is so rife. } r et when it is 
forgotten they will not be so safe ; but your danger is as great as mine — 

"Mr. Downham was with me, now come from London. He told me 
that it was three years ago since those verses were delivered to the 
king in a dream, by his Master Buchanan, who seemed to check him 
severely, as he used to do ; and his Majesty, in his dream, seemed desir- 
ous to pacify him, but he, turning avmy with a frowning countenance, 
would utter those verses, which his Majesty, perfectly remembering, 
repeated the next day, and many took notice of them. Now, by occa- 
sion of the late soreness in his arm, and the doubtfulness what it 
would prove ; especially having, by mischance, fallen into the fire with 
that arm, the remembrance of the verses began to trouble him." 

It appears that these verses were of a threatening nature, since, in a 
melancholy fit, they were recalled to recollection after an interval of 
three years; the ,erses are lost to us, with the letter which contained 
them. 



HIS HABITS THOSE OF A MAN OP. LETTERS. 521 

enumerate the whole of his Majesty's occupations, 
and every dish that had been placed on the table during 
the interval. But this courtier was not aware that 
the monotony which the king occasioned him was not 
so much in the king himself as in his own volatile 
spirit. 

The table of James I. was a trial of wits, says a more 
learned courtier, who often partook of these prolonged 
conversations : those genial and convivial conferences 
were the recreations of the king, and the means often of 
advancing those whose talents had then an opportunity 
of discovering themselves. A life so constant in its 
pursuits was to have been expected from the temper of 
him who, at the view of the Bodleian library, exclaimed, 
" Were I not a king, I would be an university man ; and 
if it were so that I must be a prisoner, I would have 
no other prison than this library, and be chained together 
with all these goodly authors."* 

Study, indeed, became one of the businesses of life with 
our contemplative monarch ; and so zealous was James 
to form his future successor, that he even seriously 
engaged in. the education of both his sons. James I. 
offers the singular spectacle of a father who was at once 
a preceptor and a monarch : it was in this spirit the king 
composed his " Basilicon Doron ; or, His Majesty's Instruc- 
tions to his dearest Son Henry the Prince," a work of 
which something more than the intention is great ; and 
he directed the studies of the unfortunate Charles. That 
both these princes were no common pupils may be fairly 
attributed to the king himself. Never did the character 
of a young prince shoot out with nobler promises than 
Henry ; an enthusiast for literature and arms, that prince 

* In this well-known exclamation of James L, a witty allusion has 
been probably overlooked. The king had in his mind the then preva- 
lent custom of securing books by fastening them to the shelves by 
chains long enough to reach to the reading-desks under them. 



522 CHARACTER OF JAMES THE FIRST. 

early showed a great and commanding spirit. Charles 
was a man of fine taste: he had talents and virtues, 
errors and misfortunes; but he was not without a spirit 
equal to the days of his trial. 



FACILITY AND COPIOUSNESS OF HIS COM- 
POSITION. 

The mind of James I. had at all times the fulness of a 
student's, delighting in the facility and copiousness of 

composition. The king wrote in one week one hundred 
folio pages of a monitory address to the European sov- 
ereigns ; and, in as short a time, his apology, sent to the 
pope and cardinals. These he delivered to the bishops, 

merely as notes for their use ; hut they were declared to 
form of themselves a complete answer. " Qua felicitate 
they were done, let others judge ; but Qua edentate, I can 
tell," says the courtly bishop who collected the king's 
works, and who is here quoted, not for the compliment 
he would infer, but for the fact he states. The week's 
labour of his majesty provoked from Cardinal Perron 
about one thousand pages in folio, and replies and 
rejoinders from the learned in Europe.* 

* Mr. Lodge, in his " Illustrations of British History," praises and 
abuses James I. for the very same treatises. Mr. Lodge, dropping the 
sober character of the antiquary for tho smarter one of the critic, tells 
us, " James had the good fortune to gain the two points he 
principally aimed at in the publication of these dull treatises — the 
reputation of an acute disputant, and the honour of having Cardinal 
BeUarmin for an antagonist." Did Mr. Lodge ever read these " dull 
treatises ?" I declare I never have ; but I believe these treatises are 
not dull, from the inference he draws from them : for how any writer 
can gain the reputation of " an acute disputant " by writing " dull 
treatises," Mr. Lodge only can explain. It is in this manner, and by 
unphilosophical critics, that the literary reputation of James has been 
flourished down by modern pens. It was sure gamo to attack 
James 1. 1 



HIS ELOQUENCE. 523 



HIS ELOQUENCE. 

The eloquence of James is another feature in the liter- 
ary character of this monarch. Amid the sycophancy of 
the court of a learned sovereign some truths will mani- 
fest themselves. Bishop Williams, in his funeral eulogy 
of James L, has praised with warmth the eloquence of 
the departed monarch, whom he intimately knew ; and 
this was an acquisition of James's, so manifest to all, that 
the bishop made eloquence essential to the dignity of a 
monarch; observing, that "it was the want of it that 
made Moses, in a manner, refuse all government, though 
offered by God."* He would not have hazarded so pecu- 
liar an eulogium, had not the monarch been distinguished 
by that talent. 

Hume first observed of James I., that " the speaker of 
the House of Commons is usually an eminent man ; yet 
the harangue of his Majesty will always be found much su- 
perior to that of the speaker in every parliament during 

* This funeral sermon, by laying such a stress on the eloquence of 
James I., it is said, occasioned the disgrace of the zealous bishop ; per- 
haps, also, by the arts of the new courtiers practising on the feelings 
of the young monarch. It appears that Charles betrayed frequent 
symptoms of impatience. 

This allusion to the stammering of Moses was most unlucky ; for Charles 
had this defect in his delivery, which he laboured all his life to correct. 
In the first speech from the throne, he alludes to it : " Now, because 
I am unfit for much speaking, I mean to bring up the fashion of my pre- 
decessors, to have my lord-keeper speak for me in most things." And 
he closed a speech to the Scottish parliament by saying, that "he does 
not offer to endear himself by words, which indeed is not my way." 
This, however, proved to be one of those little circumstances which 
produce a more important result than is suspected. By this substitu- 
tion of a lord-keeper instead of the sovereign, he failed in exciting the 
personal affections of his parliament. Even the most gracious speech 
from the lips of a lord-keeper is but formally delivered, and coldly 
received ; and Charles had not yet learned that there are no deputies 
for our feeling's. 



52i CHARACTER OF JAMES THE FIRST. 

this reign." His numerous proclamations are evidently 
wrought by his own hand, and display the pristine vigour 
of the state of our age of genius. That the state-pa 
were usually composed by himself, a passage in the Life 
of the Lord-keeper Williams testifies; and when 
Edward Conway, who had been bred a soldier, and 
even illiterate, became a viscount, and a royal secretary, 
by the appointment of Buckingham, the king, who in fact 
wanted do secretary, would often be merry over his im- 
perfect -crawls in writing, and his hacking of sentences 
in reading, often breaking out in laughter, exclaiming, 
"Stennyhas provided me with a secretary who can neither 
write nor read, and a groom of my bedchamber who can- 
not truss my points," — this latter person having but one 
hand ! It is evident, since Lord Conway, the most inef- 
ficient secretary ever king had — and I have myself seen 
his scrawls — remained many years in office, that James I. 
required no secretary, and transacted his affairs with his 
own mind and hand. These habits of business and of study 
prove that James indulged much less those of indolence, 
for which he is so gratuitously accused. 



HIS WIT. 

Amid all the ridicule and contempt in which the intel- 
lectual capacity of James I. is involved, this college- 
pedant, who is imagined to have given in to every 
species of false wit, and never to have reached beyond 
quibbles, puns, conceits, and quo-libets, — was in truth a 
great wit ; quick in retort, and happy in illustration ; and 
often delivering opinions with a sententious force. More 
wit and wisdom from his lips have descended to us than 
from any other of our sovereigns. One of the malicious 
writers of his secret history, Sir Anthony Weldon, not 
only informs us that he w T as witty, but describes the man- 



SPECIMENS OE HIS HUMOUE, ETC. 525 

ner : " He was very witty, and had as many witty jests 
as any man living : at which he would not smile himself, 
but deliver them in a grave and serious maimer." Thus 
the king was not only witty, but a dextrous wit : nor is 
he one of those who are recorded as having only said one 
good thing in their lives ; for his vein was not apt to 
dry. 

His conversations, like those of most literary men, he 
loved to prolong at table. We find them described by 
one who had partaken of them : 

" The reading of some books before him was very 
frequent, while he was at his repast ; and otherwise he 
collected knowledge by variety of questions, which he 
carved out to the capacity of different persons. Me- 
thought his hunting humour was not off, while the 
learned stood about him at his board; he was ever in 
chase after some disputable doubts, which he would wind 
and turn about with the most stabbing objections that 
ever I heard ; and was as pleasant and fellow-like, in all 
these discourses, as with his huntsman in the field. Those 
who were ripe and weighty in their answers were ever 
designed for some place of credit or profit." * 



SPECIMENS OF HIS HUMOUR, AND OBSERVA- 
TIONS ON HUMAN LIFE. 

The relics of witticisms and observations on human 
life, on state affairs, in literature and history, are scat- 
tered among contemporary writers, and some are even 
traditional; I regret that I have not preserved many 
which occurred in the course of reading. It has hap- 
pened, however, that a man of genius has preserved for 

* Hacket's curious "Life of the Lord-keeper Williams," p. 38, Part 
11. 



j 26 CHARACTER OF JAMES THE FIRST. 

posterity sonic memorials of the wit, the learning, and 
the sense of the monarch.* 

In giving sonic Loose specimens of the wit and capacity 
of a man, if they arc too few, it may be imagined that 
they arc bo from their rarity; and if too many, the page 
swells into a mere collection. But truth is not over-nice 
to obtain her purpose, and even the common labours she 
inspires are associated with her pleasures, 

Early in life James I. had displayed the talent of apt 
allusion, and his classical wit <>n the Spaniards, that "lie 
expected no other favour from them than the courtesy of 
Polyphemus to Ulysses — to be the last devoured," de- 
lighted Elizabeth, and has even entered into our history. 
Arthur Wilson, at the close of his "Life of James I.," 
has preserved one of his apothegms, while he censures 
him for not making timely use of it! "Let that prince, 
who would beware of conspiracies, be rather jealous of 
such whom his extraordinary favours have advanced, 



* la the Harl. MSS. 7582, Art. 3, one entitled " Crumms fallen from 
King James's Table ; or his Table-Talk, taken by Sir Thomas Overbuiy. 
The original being in his own handwriting." This MS. has been, per- 
haps, imperfectly printed in the " Prince's Cabala, or Mysteries of 
State," 1715. This Collection of Sir Thomas Ovcrbury was shortened 
by his unhappy fate, since he perished early in the reign. — Another 
Harl. MS. contains things " as they were at sundrie times spoken by 
James I." I have drawn others from the Harl. MSS. 6395. "We have 
also printed, " Wittie Observations, gathered in King James's Ordinary 
Discourse," 1643; "King James, his Apothegmes or Table-Talk as they 
were by him delivered occasionally, and by the publisher, his quondam 
servant, carefully received, by B. A., gent. 4°. in eight leaves. 1643." 
The collector was Ben n . Agar, who had gathered them in his youth ; 
""Witty Apothegmes, delivered at several times by King James, King 
Charles, the Marquis of "Worcester," &c, 1658. 

The collection of Apothegms formed by Lord Bacon offers many 
instances of the king's wit and sense. See Lord Bacon's Apothegms 
new and old ; they are numbered to 275 in the edition 1819. Basil 
Montague, in his edition, has separated what he distinguishes as the 
spurious ones. 



SPECIMENS OF HIS HUMOUR, ETC. 527 

than of those whom his displeasure have discontented. 
T/iese want means to execute their pleasures, but those 
have means at pleasure to execute their desires." — Wil- 
son himself ably develops this important state-observa- 
tion, by adding, that " Ambition to rule is more vehement 
than malice to revenge." A pointed reflection, which 
rivals a maxim of Rochefoucault. 

The king observed that, " Yery wise men and very 
fools do little harm ; it is the mediocrity of wisdom that 
troubleth all the world." — He described, by a lively image, 
the differences which rise in argument : " Men, in argu- 
ing, are often carried by the force of words farther asun- 
der than their question was at first ; like two ships going 
out of the same haven, their landing is many times whole 
countries distant." 

One of the great national grievances, as it appeared 
both to the government and the people, in James's reign, 
was the perpetual growth of the metropolis ; and the na- 
tion, like an hypochondriac, was ludicrously terrified that 
their head was too monstrous for their body, and drew 
all the moisture of life from the remoter parts. It is 
amusing to observe the endless and vain precautions em- 
ployed to stop all new buildings, and to force persons out 
of town to reside at their country mansions. Proclama- 
tions warned and exhorted, but the very interference of 
prohibition rendered the crowded town more delightful. 
One of its attendant calamities was the prevalent one of 
that day, the plague ; and one of those state libels, which 
were early suppressed, or never printed, entitled, " Ba- 
laam's Ass," has this passage : " In this deluge of new 
buildings, we shall be all poisoned with breathing in one 
another's faces ; and your Majesty has most truly said, 
England will shortly be London, and London, England." 
It was the popular wish, that country gentlemen should 
reside more on their estates, and it was on this occasion 
that the king made that admirable allusion, which has been 



528 CHARACTER OF JAMES THE FIRST. 

in our days repeated in the House of Commons: " Gen- 
tlemen resident on their estates were like ships in port — 
'their value and magnitude wen- felt and acknowledged; 
but, when at a distance, as their size seemed insignificant, 
so their worth and importance were not duly estimated/' 
The king abounded with similar observations; for he 
drew from life more than even from books. 

James is reproached for being deficient in political saga- 
city; notwithstanding that he somewhat prided himself 
on what he denominated " king's-craff" This is the fate 
of a pacific and domestic prince! 

A king," said James, " ought to be a preserver of his 
people, as well of their fortunes as lives, and not a de- 
stroyer of his Bubjects. Were I to make such a war as 
the King of France doth, with such tyranny on his 
own subjects — with Protestants on one side, and his soldiers 
drawn to slaughter on the other, — I would put myself in 
a monastery all my days after, and repent me that I had 
brought my subjects to such misery." 

That James was an adept in his " king's-craft," by which 
term he meant the science of politics, but which has been 
so often misinterpreted in an ill sense, even the confession 
of such a writer as Sir Anthony Weidon testifies; who 
acknowledges that " no prince living knew how to make 
use of men better than King James." He certainly fore- 
saw the spirit of the Commons, and predicted to the prince 
and Buckingham, events which occurred after his death. 
When Cranfield, Earl of Middlesex, whom James consid- 
ered a useful servant, Buckingham sacrificed, as it would 
appear, to the clamours of a party, James said, "You 
are making a rod for your own back ;" and when Prince 
Charles was encouraging the frequent petitions of the 
Commons, James told him, " You will live to have your 
bellyful of petitions." The following anecdote may serve 
to prove his political sagacity : — When the Emperor of 
Germany, instigated by the Pope and his own state-in- 



SPECIMENS OF HIS HUMOUR, ETC. 529 

terests, projected a crusade against the Turks, he solicited 
from James the aid of three thousand Englishmen ; the 
wise and pacific monarch, in return, advised the emperor's 
ambassador to apply to France and Spain, as being more 
nearly concerned in this project : but the ambassador very 
ingeniously argued, that, James being a more remote 
prince, would more effectually alarm the Turks, from a 
notion of a general armament of the Christian princes 
against them. James got rid of the importunate ambassa- 
dor by observing, that " three thousand Englishmen 
would do no more hurt to the Turks than fleas to their 
skins : great attempts may do good by a destruction, but 
little ones only stir up anger to hurt themselves." 

His vein of familiar humour flowed at all times, and his 
facetiousness was sometimes indulged at the cost of his 
royalty. In those unhappy differences between him and 
his parliament, one clay mounting his horse, which, though 
usually sober and quiet, began to bound and prance,— 
" Sirrah !" exclaimed the king, who seemed to fancy that 
his favourite prerogative was somewhat resisted on this 
occasion, " if you be not quiet, I'll send you to the five 
hundred kings in the lower house : they'll quickly tame 
you." When one of the Lumleys was pushing on his 
lineal ascent beyond the patience of the hearers, the king 
to cut short the tedious descendant of the Lumleys, cries 
out, " Stop mon ! thou needst no more : now I learn that 
Adam's surname was Lumley !" When Colonel Gray, a 
military adventurer of that clay, just returned from Ger- 
many, seemed vain of his accoutrements, on which he had 
spent his all,— the king, staring at this buckled, belted, 
sworded, and pistolled, but ruined, martinet, observed, 
that " this town was so well fortified, that, were it victual- 
led, it might be impregnable." 
34 



530 CHARACTER OF JAMES TIIK FIRST. 

EVIDENCES OF His SAGACITY IN THE DIS- 
COVER! OF TRUTH. 

Possessing the talent of eloquence, the quickness of wit, 
and the diversified knowledge which produced his"Ta- 
ble-talk," we find also many evidences of his sagacity in 
the discovery of truth, with that patient zeal so honoura- 
ble to a monarch. When the shipwrights, jealous of 
Pett, our great naval architect, formed a party against 
him, the king would judge with his own eyes. Having 
examined the materials depreciated byPett's accusers, lie 
declared that "the cross-grain was in the men, not in the 
limber." The king, <>n historical evidence, and by what 
he said in his own works, claims the honour of discover- 
ing the gunpowder plot, by the sagacity and reflect ion 
witli which he solved the enigmatical and un^rammatical 
letter sent on that occasion. The train of his thoughts 
has even been preserved to us ; and although a loose pas- 
sage, in a private letter of the Earl of Salisbury, contra- 
dicted by another passage in the same letter, would indi- 
cate that the earl was the man; yet even Mrs. Macaulay 
acknowledges the propriety of attributing the discovery 
to the king's sagacity. Several proofs of his zeal and re- 
flection in the detection of imposture might be adduced ; 
and the reader may, perhaps, be amused at these. 

There existed a conspiracy against the Countess of Exe- 
ter by Lady Lake, and her daughter, Lady Ross. They 
had contrived to forge a letter in the Countess's name, in 
which she confessed all the heavy crimes they accused her 
of, which were incest, witchcraft, &c. ;* and to confirm 
its authenticity, as the king was curious respecting the 
place, the time, and the occasion, when the letter was 
written, their maid swore it was at the countess's house 
at Wimbledon, and that she had written it at the window 

* Camden's "Annals of James I., Kennet II., 652." 



SAGACITY IN THE DISCO VERY OE TRUTH. 5 31 

near the upper end of the great chamber ; and that she 
(the maid) was hid beneath the tapestry, where she heard 
the countess read over the letter after writing. The kino; 
appeared satisfied with this new testimony ; but, unex- 
pectedly, he visited the great chamber at Wimbledon, 
observed the distance of the window, placed himself be- 
hind the hangings, and made the lords in their turn : not 
one could distinctly hear the voice of a person placed at 
the window. The king further observed, that the tapes- 
try was two feet short of the ground, and that any one 
standing behind it must inevitably be discovered. " Oaths 
cannot confound my sight," exclaimed the king. Having 
also effectuated other discoveries with a confession of one 
of the parties, and Sir Thomas Lake being a faithful servant 
of James, as he had been of Elizabeth, the king, who 
valued him, desired he would not stand the trial with his 
wife and daughter ; but the old man pleaded that he was a 
husband and a father, and must fall with them. " It is a 
fall !" said the king ; " your wife is the serpent ; your 
daughter is Eve ; and you, poor man, are Adam !"* 

The sullen Osborne reluctantly says, " I must confess 
he was the promptest man living in detecting an impos- 
ture." There was a singular impostor in his reign, of 
whom no one denies the king the merit of detecting the 
deception — so far was James I. from being credulous, as 
he is generally supposed to have been. Ridiculous as the 
affair may appear to us, it had perfectly succeeded with 
the learned fellows of New College, Oxford, and after- 
wards with heads as deep ; and it required some exertion 
of the king's philosophical reasoning to pronounce on the 
deception. 

One Haddock, who was desirous of becoming a preach- 

* The suit cost Sir Thomas Lake 30,0007. ; the fines in the star-cham- 
ber were always heavy in all reigns. Harris refers to this cause as an 
evidence of the tyrannic conduct of James I., as if the king was always 
influenced by personal dislike ; but he does not give the story. 



532 CHARACTER OF JAMES TIIE FIRST. 

cr, but had a stuttering and slowness of utterance, which 
he could not get rid of, took to the study of physic; but 
recollecting that, when at Winchester, his schoolfellows 
had told him that he spoke fluently in his sleep, he tried, 
affecting to be asleep, to form a discourse on physic. 
Finding that he succeeded, he continued the practice: he 
then tried divinity, and spoke a good sermon. Having 
prepared one for the purpose, he sat up in his bed and de- 
livered it so loudly that it attracted attention in the next 
chamber. It was soon reported that Haddock preached 
in his sleep; and nothing was heard but inquiries after 
the sleeping preacher, who soon found it his interest to 
keep up the delusion. He was now considered as a man 
truly inspired; and he did not in his own mind rate his 
talents at less worth than the first vacant bishopric. He 
was brought to court, where the greatest personages 
anxiously sat up through the night by his bedside. They 
tried all the maliciousness of Puck to pinch and to stir him : 
he was without hearing or feeling; but they never de- 
parted without an orderly text and sermon ; at the close 
of which, groaning and stretching himself, he pretended 
to awake, declaring he was unconcious of what had pass- 
ed. " The king," says Wilson, no flatterer of James, 
" privately handled him so like a chirurgeon, that he found 
out the sore." The king was present at one of these ser- 
mons, and forbade them ; and his reasonings, on this oc- 
casion, brought the sleeping preacher on his knees. The 
king observed, that things studied in the day-time may 
be dreamed of in the night, but always irregularly, with- 
out order ; not, as these sermons were, good and learned : 
as particularly the one preached before his Majesty in his 
sleep — which he first treated physically, then theological- 
ly ; " and I observed," said the king, " that he always 
preaches best when he has the most crowded audience." 
" Were he allowed to proceed, all slander and treason 
might pass under colour of being asleep," added the king, 



BASILICON DORON. 533 

who, notwithstanding his pretended inspiration, awoke 
the sleeping preacher for ever afterwards. 



BASILICON DOROK 

That treatise of James I., entitled " Basilicon Doron ; 
or, His Majesty's Instructions to his dearest Son Henry the 
Prince," was composed by the king in Scotland, in the 
freshness of his studious days ; a work, addressed to a 
prince by a monarch which, in some respects, could only 
have come from the hands of such a workman. The morality 
and the politics often retain their curiosity and their 
value. Our royal author has drawn his principles of 
government from the classical volumes of antiquity ; for 
then politicians quoted Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero. 
His waters had, indeed, flowed over those beds of ore ;* 
but the growth and vigour of the work comes from the 
mind of the king himself: he writes for the Prince of 
of Scotland, and about the Scottish people. On its first 
appearance Camden has recorded the strong sensation it 
excited : it was not only admired, but it entered into and 
won the hearts of men. Harris, forced to acknowledge, 
in his mean style and with his frigid temper, that " this 
book contains some tolerable things," omits not to hint 
that " it might not be his own :" but the claims of James 
I. are evident from the peculiarity of the style ; the 
period at which it was composed ; and by those particular 
passages stamped with all the individuality of the king 
himself. The style is remarkable for its profuse sprink- 
ling of Scottish and French words, where the Doric plain- 
ness of the one, and the intelligent expression of the other, 

* James, early in life, was a fine scholar, and a lover of the ancient 
historians, as appears from an accidental expression of Buchanan's, 
in his dedication to James of his " Baptistes;" referring to Sallust, he 
adds, apud tuum Salustium. 



53-i CHARACTER Ofr /AMES TUE FIRST. 

offer curious instances of the influence of manners over 
language; the diction of the royal author is a striking 
evidence of the intermixture of the two nations, and of a 
court which had marked its divided interests by its own 

chequered langua. 

This royal manual still interests a philosophical mind ; 
like one of those antique and curious pictures we some- 
times discover in a cabinet, — studied for the costume; yet 
where the touches of nature are true, although the 
colouring is brown and faded ; hut there is a force, and 
sometimes even a charm, in the ancient simplicity, to 
which even the delicacy of taste may return, not without 
pleasure. The king tells his son : — 

"Sith all people are naturally inclined to follow their 
prince's example, in your own person make your wordes 
and deedes to fight together; and let your own life be a 
law-book and a mirror to your people, that therein they 
may read the practice of their own lawes, and see by your 
image what life they should lead. 

" But vnto one faulte is all the common people of this 
kingdome subject, as well burgh as land ; which is, to 
judge and speak rashly of their prince, setting the 
commonweale vpon foure props, as wee call it ; euer 
wearying of the present estate, and desirous of nouelties." 
The remedy the king suggests, " besides the execution of 
laws that are to be vsed against vnreuerent speakers," 
is so to rule, as that " the subjects may not only live in 
suretie and wealth, but be stirred up to open their 
mouthes in your iust praise." 



JAMES THE FIRST'S IDEA OF A TYRANT 
AND A KING. 

The royal author distinguishes a king from a tyrant on 
their first entrance into the government ■ — 



HIS IDEA OF A TYRANT AND A KING. 535 

" A tyrant will enter like a saint, till he find himself 
fast under foot, and then will suffer his unruly affections 
to burst forth." He advises the prince to act contrary 
to Nero, who, at first, " with his tender-hearted wish, 
vettem nescire Hteras" appeared to lament that he was to 
execute the laws. He, on the contrary, would have the 
prince early show " the severitie of justice, which will 
settle the country, and make them know that ye can 
strike : this would be but for a time. If otherwise ye 
kyth (show) your clemencie at the first the offences would 
soon come to such heapes, and the contempt of you grow 
so great, that when ye would fall to punish, the number 
to be punished would exceed the innocent ; and ye 
would, against your nature, be compelled then to wracke 
manie, whom the chastisement of few in the beginning 
might have preserved. In this my own dear-bought 
experience may serve you for a different lesson. For I 
confess, where I thought (by being gracious at the 
beginning) to gain all men's heart to a loving and willing 
obedience, I by the contrarie found the disorder of the 
countrie, and the loss of my thanks, to be all my reward." 

James, in the course of the work, often instructs the 
prince by his own errors and misfortunes ; and certainly 
one of these was an excess of the kinder impulses in 
granting favours ; there was nothing selfish in his happi- 
ness ; James seemed to wish that every one around him 
should participate in the fulness of his own enjoyment. 
His hand was always open to scatter about him honours 
and wealth, and not always on unworthy favourites, but 
often on learned men whose talents he knew well to 
appreciate. There was a warmth in the king's temper 
which once he himself well described ; he did not like 
those who pride themselves on their tepid dispositions 
" I love not one that will never be angry, for as he that 
is without sorrow is without gladness, so he that is with- 
out anger is without love. Give me the heart of a man, 



536 CHARACTER OF JAMES TIIE FIRST. 

and out of that all his actions shall be acceptable." The 
king thus addresses the prince : — 

On the Choice of Servant* and Associates. 

"Be not moved with importunities; for the which 
cause, as also for augmenting your Maiestie, be not so 

facile of access-giving at all times, as I have been." — In 
his minority, the choice of his Bervants had been made by 
others, "recommending servants unto me, more for serv- 
ing, in effect, their friends that put them in, than their 
maister thai admitted them, and used them well, at the 
firsl rebellion raised againsl me. Chuse you your own 
servantes for your own yse, and not for the vse of others ; 
and. vim,. y e muei be communis parens to all your peo- 
ple chuse indifferent lie out of all quarters; not respect- 
ing other men's appetites, hut their own qualities. For as 
you must command all, so reason would ye should be 
served of all. — Be a daily watchman over your own 
servants, that they obey your laws precisely : for how 
can your laws be kept in the country, if they be broken 
at your eare ! — Bee homelie or strange with them, as ye 
think their behaviour deserveth and their nature may 
bear ill. — Employ every man as ye think him qualified, 
but use not one in all things, lest he wax proud, and be 
envied by his fellows. — As for the other sort of your 
companie and seiwants, they ought to be of perfect age, 
see they be of a good fame ; otherwise what can the 
people think but that ye have chosen a companion unto 
you according to your own humour, and so have pre- 
ferred those men for the love of their vices and crimes, 
that ye knew them to be guiltie of. For the people, that 
see you not within, cannot judge of you but according to 
the outward appearance of your actions and company, 
which only is subject to their sight." 



THE REVOLUTIONISTS OF THAT AGE. 537 

THEREVOLTTTIONISTS OF THAT AGE. 

James I. has painted, with vivid touches, the Anti- 
Monarchists, or revolutionists, of his time. 

He describes " their imagined democracie, where they 
fed themselves with the hope to become tribuni plebi ; 
and so, in a popular government, by leading the people by 
the nose, to bear the sway of all the rule. — Every faction," 
he adds, "always joined them. I was ofttimes calum- 
niated in their poular sermons, not for any evill or vice in 
me,* but because I was a king, which they thought the 
highest evill ; and, because they were ashamed to pro- 
fesse this quarrel, they were busie to look narrowly in 
all my actions, pretending to distinguish the lawfulness 
of the office from the vice of the person ; yet some of 
them would snapper out well grossly with the trewth of 
their intentions, informing the people that all kings and 
princes were naturally enemies to the liberties of the 
Church ; whereby the ignorant were emboldened (as 
bayards),f to cry the learned and modest out of it : but 
their parity is the mother of confusion, and enemie to 
vnitie, which is the mother of order." And it is not 
without eloquence his Majesty describes these factious 
Anti-Monarchists, as " Men, whom no deserts can oblige, 
neither oaths nor promises bind ; breathing nothing but 
sedition and calumnies, aspiring without measure, railing 
without reason, and making their own imaginations the 
square of their conscience. I protest, before the great 



* The conduct of James I. in Scotland has even extorted praise from 
one of his bitterest calumniators ; for Mrs. Macaulay has said — " His 
conduct, when King of Scotland, was in many points unexception- 
able." 

f An old French word, expressing, " A man that gapes or gazes 
earnestly at a thing; a fly-catcher; a greedy and unmannerly be- 
holder. " — COTGRAVE. 



538 CHARACTER OF JAMES THE FIRST. 

God, and, since I am here as vpon my testament, it is no 
place for me to lie in, thai ye shall never find with any 
Hie-land, or Border theeves, greater ingratitude, and 
more lies and vile perjuries: ye ma}- keep them for try. 
ing your patience, as Socrates did an evill wife." 



OF THE NOBILITY OF SCOTLAND. 

Tin-: king makes three great divisions of the Scottish 
people: the church, the nobility, and the burghers. 

Of the nobility, the king counsels the prince to check. 

•• A fectless arrogant conceit of their greatness and 
power, drinking in with their very nourish-milk. Teach 
yournobilitieto kce]> your lawes, as precisely as the mean- 
est ; fear not their orping, or being discontented, as long 
as ye rule well : for their pretended reformation of 
princes taketh never effect, but where evil government 
proceedeth. Acquaint yourself so with all the honest 
men of your barone and gentlemen, giving access so open 
and aifable, to make their own suites to you themselves> 
and not to employ the great lordes, their intercessours ; 
so shall ye bring to a measure their monstrous backes. 
And for their barbarous feides (feuds), put the laws to 
due execution made by mee there-anent ; beginning ever 
rathest at him that yee love best, and is oblished vnto you> 
to make him an example to the rest. Make all your refor- 
mations to begin at your elbow, and so by degrees to 
the extremities of the land." 

He would not, however, that the prince should highly 
contemn the nobility : " Remember, howe that error 
brake the king, my grandfather's heart. Consider that 
vertue followeth oftest noble blood : the more frequently 
that your court can be garnished with them, as peers and 
fathers of your land, thinke it the more your honour." 

He impresses on the mind of the prince ever to em- 



OF COLONISING.— OF MERCHANTS. 539 

brace the quarrel of the poor and the sufferer, and to 
remember the honourable title given to his grandfather, 
in being called " The poor man's king." 



OF COLONISING. 

James I. had a project of improving the state of those 
that dwelt in the isles, " who are so utterly barbarous," 
by intermixing some of the semi-civilised Highlanders, 
and planting colonies among them of inland subjects. 

" I have already made laws against the over-lords, and 
the chief of their clannes, and it would be no difficultie 
to danton them ; so rooting out, or transporting the bar- 
barous and stubborn sort, and planting civilised in their 
rooms." 

This was as wise a scheme as any modern philosopher 
could have suggested, and, with the conduct he subse- 
quently pursued in Ireland, may be referred to as splen- 
did proofs of the kingly duties so zealously performed by 
this monarch. 



OF MERCHANTS. 

Of merchants, as this king understood the commercial 
character, he had no honourable notion. 

He says, " They think the whole commonwealth or- 
dained for raising them up, and accounting it their law- 
ful gain to enrich themselves upon the losses of the rest 
of the people." 

We are not to censure James I. for his principles of 
political economy, which then had not assumed the dig- 
nity of a science ; his rude and simple ideas convey popu- 
lar truths. 



540 CHARACTER OF JAMES TI1E FIRST. 



REGULATIONS FOR THE PRINCE'S MANNERS 
AM) HABITS. 

The last portion of the "Basilicon Doron" is devoir. 1 
to domestic regulations for the prince, respecting his 
manners and habits; which the king calls " the indifferent 
actions of a man.' 1 

"A king is set as one on a stage, whose smallest 
actions and gestures all the people gazinglie do behold ; 
and, however just in the discharge of his oilier, yet, if his 
oehaviour be light or dissolute, in indifferent actions, the 
people, who see but the outward part, conceive pre-ocou- 
pied conceits of the king's inward intention, which, 
although with time, the trier of truth, will evanish by 
tin- evidence of the contrarie effect yet interim patitur 
Justus, and pre-judged conceits will, in the meantime, 
breed contempt, the mother of rebellion and disorder. 
Besides," the king adds, "the indifferent actions and 
behaviour of a man have a certain holding and depend- 
ence upon vertue or vice, according as they are used or 
ruled." 

The prince is not to keep regular hours. 

" That any time in the four and twentie hours may be 
alike to you ; thereby your diet may be accommodated 
to your affairs, and not your affairs to your diet." 

The prince is to eat in public, " to shew that he loves 
not to haunt companie, which is one of the marks of a 
tyrant, and that he delights not to eat privatelie, ashamed 
of his gluttonie." As a curious instance of the manners 
of the times, the king advises the prince " to use mostly 
to eat of reasonablie-grosse and common-meats ; not only 
for making your bodie strong for travel, as that ye may 
be the hartlier received by your meane subiects in their 
houses, when their cheere may suffice you, which other- 



THE PRINCE'S MANNERS AND HABITS. 54-1 

waies would be imputed to you for pride, and breed cold- 
ness and disdaiu in them." 

I have noticed his counsel against the pedantry or other 
affectations of style in speaking. 

He adds, "Let it be plaine, natural, comelie, cleane, 
short, and sententious." 

In his gestures "he is neither to look sillily, like a 
stupid pedant ; nor unsettledly, with an uncouth morgue, 
like a new-come-over cavalier ; not over sparing in your 
courtesies, for that will be imputed to incivilitie and ar- 
rogance ; nor yet OA~er prodigal in jowking or nodding at 
every step, for that forme of being popular becometh bet- 
ter aspiring Absaloms than lawful kings ; forming ever 
your gesture according to your present action; looking 
gravely, and with a majestie, when ye sit upon judgment, 
or give audience to embassadors ; homely, when ye are 
in private with your own servants; merrily, when ye are 
at any pastime, or merry discourse ; and let your counte- 
nance smell of courage and magnanimity when at the 
warres. And remember (I say again) to be plaine and 
sensible in your language ; for besides, it is the tongue's 
office to be the messenger of the mind ; it may be thought 
a point of iinbecilitie of spirit in a king to speak obscurely, 
much more untrewely, as if he stood in awe of any in 
uttering his thoughts." 

Should the prince incline to be an author, the king adds — 

" If your engine (genius) spur you to write any workes, 
either in prose or verse, I cannot but allow you to prac- 
tise it ; but take no longsorue works in hande, for distract- 
ing you from your calling." 

He reminds the prince with dignity and truth, 

" Your writes (writings) will remain as the true pic- 
ture of your minde, to all posterities ; if yee would write 
worthelie, chuse subjects worthie of you." His critical 
conception of the nature of poetry is its best definition. 
"If ye write in verse, remember that it is not the 



542 CHARACTER OF JAMES THE FIRST. 

principal part of a poem to rime right, and flow well with 
many prettie word es ; but the chief commendation of a 
poem is, thai when the verse shall bee taken sundry in 
prose, it shall be found so ritch in epiiek invention! and 
poetiek floures, and in fair and pertinent comparisons, 
as it shall retain the lustre of a poem although in pro 

The king proceeds, touching many curious points con- 
cerning the prince's bodily exercises and " house-pas- 
times." A genuine picture of the customs and manner! 
of the age : our royal author had the eye of an observer, 
and the thoughtfulness of a Base. 

The king closes with the hope that the prince's " natural 
inclination will have a happie simpathie with these pre- 
cepts ; making the wise man's schoolmaister, which is the 
example of others, to be your teacher ; and not that over- 
late repentance by your own experience, which is the 
schoolmaister of fools." 

Thus have I opened the book, and I believe, the heart 
of James I. The volume remains a perpetual witness to 
posterity of the intellectual capacity and the noble disposi- 
tion of the royal author. 

But this monarch has been unfairly reproached both 
by the political and religious ; as far as these aspersions 
connect themselves with his character, they enter into our 
inquiry. 

His speeches and his writings are perpetually quoted 
by democratic writers, with the furious zeal. of those who 
are doing the work of a party ; they never separate the 
character of James from his speculative principle> 
of government ; and, such is the odium they have raised 
against him, that this sovereign has received the execra- 
tion, or the ridicule, even of those who do not belong 
to their party. James maintained certain abstract doc- 
trines of the times, and had written on " The Preroga- 
tive Royal," and " The Trew Laws of Free Monarchies," 
as he had on witches and devils. All this verbal despot- 



THE KING'S IDEA OF ROYAL PREROGATIVE. 543 

ism is artfully converted into so many acts of despotism 
itself; and thus they contrive their dramatic exhibition 
of a blustering tyrant, in the person of a father of his peo- 
ple, who exercised his power without an atom of brutal 
despotism adhering to it. 

THE KING'S IDEA OF THE ROYAL PRE- 
ROGATTVE. 

Whex James asserted that a king is above the laws, he 
did not understand this in the popular sense ; nor was 
he the inventor or the reviver of similar doctrines. In 
all his mysterious flights on the nature of "The Pre- 
rogative Royal," James only maintained what Elizabeth 
and all the Tudors had, as jealously, but more energetic- 
ally exercised.* Elizabeth left to her successor the 
royal prerogative strained to its highest pitch, with no 
means to support a throne which in the succeeding reign 
was found to be baseless. The king employed the style 
of absolute power, and, as Harris says, " entertained no- 
tions of his prerogative amazingly great, and bordering 
on impiety." It never occurred to his calumniators, who 
are always writing, without throwing themselves back 
into the age of their inquiries, that all the political rever- 
ies, the abstract notions, and the metaphysical fancies of 
James I. arose from his studious desire of being an 

* In Sir Symund D'Ewes's "Journals of the Parliament. 1 ' and in 
Townshend's " Historical Collections," we trace in some degree Eliza- 
beth's arbitrary power concealed in her prerogative, which she always 
considered as the dissolving charm in the magical circle of our consti- 
tution. But I possess two letters of the French ambassador to Charles 
IX.. written from our court in her reign; who, by means of his secret 
intercourse with those about her person, details a curious narrative 
of a royal interview granted to some deputies of the parliament, at 
that moment refractory, strongly depicting the exalted notions this 
great sovereign entertained of the prerogative, and which she asserted 
in stamping her foot. 



544 CHARACTER OF JAMES THE FIRST. 

English sovereign, according to the English constitution 
— for from thence he derived those very ideas. 



THE LAWYERS' IDEA OF THE ROYAL 
PREROGATIVE. 

The truth is, that lawyers, in their anxiety to define, or 
to defend the shadowy limits of the royal prerogative, 

had contrived some strange and clumsy fictions to de- 
scribe its powers; their flatteries of the imaginary being, 
whom they called the sovereign, are more monstrous than 
all the harmless abstractions of James I. 

They describe an English sovereign as a mysterious 
being, invested with absolute perfection, and a fabulous 
immortality, whose person was inviolable by its sacred- 
ness. A king of England is not subject to death, since 
the sovereign is a corporation, expressed by the awful 
jjlural the oub and the we. His majesty is always of 
full age, though in infancy ; and so unlike mortality, the 
king can do no wrong. Such his ubiquity, that he acts 
at the same moment in different places ; and such the 
force of his testimony, that whatever the sovereign de- 
clares to have passed in his presence, becomes instantly 
a perpetual record ; he serves for his own witness, by 
the simple subscription of Teste me ipso ; and he is so 
absolute in power, beyond the laws, that he quashes them 
by his negative voice.* Such was the origin of the theo- 
retical prerogative of an ideal sovereign wdiich James I. 

* Such are the descriptions of the British sovereign, to be found in 
Cowell's curious book, entitled " The Interpreter." The reader may 
further trace the modern genius of Blackstone, with an awful reverence, 
dignifying the venerable nonsense — and the commentator on Black- 
stone sometimes labouring to explain the explanations of his master ; 
so obscure, so abstract, and so delicate is the phantom which our an- 
cient lawyers conjured up, and which the modems cannot lay. 



LAWYERS' IDEA OF ROYAL PREROGATIVE. 545 

had formed : it was a mere curious abstraction of the 
schools in the spirit of the age, which was perpetually 
referring to the mysteries of state and the secrets of 
empires, and not a principle he was practising to the det- 
riment of the subject. 

James I. while he held for his first principle that a sover- 
eign is only accountable to God for the sins of his govern- 
ment, an harmless and even a noble principle in a reli- 
gious prince, at various times acknowledged that " a king 
is ordained for procuring the prosperity of his people." 
In his speech, 1603, he says, 

" If you be rich I cannot be poor ; if you be happy I 
cannot but be fortunate. My worldly felicity consists in 
your prosperity. And that I am a servant is most true, 
as I am a head and governour of all the people in my 
dominions. If we take the people as one body, then as 
the head is ordained for the body and not the body for 
the head, so must a righteous king know himself to be 
ordained for his people, and not his people for him." 

The truth is always concealed by those writers who 
are cloaking their antipathy against monarchy, in their 
declamations against the writings of James I. Authors, 
who are so often influenced by the opinions of their age, 
have the melancholy privilege of perpetuating them, and 
of being cited as authorities for those very opinions, 
however erroneous. 

At this time the true prin iples of popular liberty, 
hidden in the constitution, were yet obscure and con- 
tested ; involved in contradiction, in assertion and recan- 
tation ; * and they have been established as much by the 

* Cowell, equally learned and honest, involved himself in contradict- 
ory positions, and was alike prosecuted by the King and the Commons, 
on opposite principles. The overbearing Coke seems to have aimed at 
his life, -which the lenity of James saved. His -work is a testimony of 
the unsettled principles of liberty at that time ; Cowell was compelled 
to appeal to one part of his book to save himscdf from the other. 
35 



54G CHARACTER OF JAMES THE FIRST. 

blood as by the ink of our patriots. Some noble spirits 
in the Commons were then struggling to fix the vacilla- 
ting principles of our government; but often their pri- 
vate passions were infused into their public feelings; 
James, who was apt to imagine that these individuals 
were instigated by a personal enmity in aiming at his 
mysterious prerogative, and at the same time found their 
rivals with equal Weighl opposing the novel opinions, 
retreated still farther into the depths and arcana of the 
constitution. Modern writers have viewed the political 
fancies of this monarch through optical instruments not 
invented in his days. 

When Sir Edward Coke declared that the king's royal 
prerogative being unlimited and undefined, " was a great 
overgrown monster ;" and, on one occasion, when Coke 
said before the king, that ' ; his .Majesty was defended by 
the laws," — James, in anger, told him lie spoke foolishly, 
and he said he was not defended by the laws, but by God 
(alluding to his "divine right") ; and sharply reprimand- 
ed him for having spoken irreverently of Sir Thomas 
Crompton, a civilian ; asserting, that Crompton was as 
good a man as Coke. The fact is, there then existed a 
rivalry between the civil and the common lawyers. Coke 
declared that the common law of England was in immi- 
nent danger of being perverted ; that law which he has 
enthusiastically described as the perfection of all sense 
and experience. Coke was strenuously opposed by Lord 
Bacon and by the civilians, and was at length committed 
to the Tower (according to a MS. letter of the day, for 
the cause is obscure in our history), " charged with speak- 
ing so in parliament as tended to stir up the subjects' 
hearts against their sovereign."* Yet in all this we 

* The following anecdotes of Lord Chief Justice Coke have not been 
published. They are extracts from manuscript letters of the times: 
on that occasion, at first, the patriot did not conduct himself with the 
firmness of a great spirit. 



LAWYERS' IDEA OF ROYAL PREROGATIVE. 547 

must not regard James as the despot he is represented : 
he acted as Elizabeth would have acted, for the sacred- 
ness of his own person, and the integrity of the constitu- 

Nov. 19, 1616. 
" The thunderbolt hath fallen on the Lord Coke, which hath overthrown 
Mm from the very roots. The supersedeas was carried to him by Sir 
George Coppin, who, at the presenting of it, received it with dejection 
and tears. Tremor et successio non cadunt in fortem et constantem. I 
send you a distich on the Lord Coke — 

Jus condere Cocus potuit, sed condere jure 
Non potuit ; potuit condere jura cocis." 

It happened that the name of Coke, or rather Cook, admitted of 
being punned on, both in Latin and in English ; for he was lodged in 
the Tower, in a room than had once been a kitchen, and as soon as he 
arrived, one had written on the door, which he read at his entrance — 

" This room has long wanted a Cook." 

"The Prince interceding lately for Edward Coke, his Majesty an- 
swered, ' He knew no such man.' "When the Prince interceded by the 
name of Mr. Coke, his Majesty still answered, ' He knew none of that 
name neither ; but he knew there was one Captain Coke, the leader of 
the faction in parliament.' " 

In another letter, Coke appears with greater dignity. When Lord 
Arundel was sent by the king to Coke, a prisoner in the Tower, to in- 
form him that his Majesty would allow him to consult with eight of the 
best learned in the law to advise liim for his cause, Coke thanked the 
king, but he knew himself to be accounted to have as much skill in 
the law as any man in England, and therefore needed no such help, 
nor feared to be judged by the law. He knew his Majesty might easily 
find, in such a one as he, whereby to take away his head ; but for this 
he feared not what could be said. 

" I have heard you affirm," said Lord Arundel, " that by law, he 
that should go about to withdraw the subjects' hearts from their king 
was a traitor." Sir Edward answered, " That he held him an arch- 
traitor." 

James I. said of Coke, " That he had so many shifts that, throw him 
where you would, he still fell upon his legs." 

This affair ended with putting Sir Edward Coke on his knees before 
the council- table, with an order to retire to a private life, to correct his 
book of Reports, and occasionally to consult the king himself. This 
part of Coke's history is fully opened in Mr. Alexander Chalmers's 
" Biographical Dictionary." 



548 CHARACTER OF JAMES THE FIRST. 

tion. In the same manuscript letter I find that, when at 
Theobalds, the king, with his usual openness, was discours- 
ing how he designed to govern ; and as he would some- 
times, like the wits of all nations and times, COmpreSi an 
argument into a play on words, — the king said, " I will 
govern according to the good of the common-iceal, but 
not according to the common-will /" 



THE KING'S ELEVATED CONCEPTION OF 
THE KINGLY CHARACTER, 

But what were the real thoughts and feelings of this pre- 
sumed despot concerning the duties of a sovereign ? His 
Platonic conceptions inspired the most exalted feelings ; 
but his gentle nature never led to one act of unfeeling 
despotism. His sceptre Mas wreathed with the roses of 
his fancy : the iron of arbitrary power only struck into the 
heart in the succeeding reign. James only menaced with 
an abstract notion ; or, in anger, with his own hand would 
tear out a protestation from the journals of the Commons : 
and, when he considered a man as past forgiveness, he con- 
demned him to a slight imprisonment ; or removed him 
to a distant employment ; or, if an author, like Coke and 
Cowell, sent him into retirement to correct his works. 

In a great court of judicature, when the interference of 
the royal authority was ardently solicited, the magnani- 
mous monarch replied : — 

" Kings ruled by their laws, as God did by the laws of 
nature ; and ought as rarely to put in use their supreme 
authority as God does his power of working miracles." 

Notwithstanding his abstract principles, his knowledge 
and reflection showed him that there is a crisis in mon- 
archies and a period in empires ; and in discriminating 
between a king and a tyrant, he tells the prince — 

" A tyranne's miserable and infamous life armeth in end 



CONCEPTION OF THE KINGLY CHARACTER. 549 

Lis own subjects to become his burreaux; and although, 
this rebellion be ever unlawful on their part, yet is the 
world so wearied of him, that his fall is little meaned 
(minded) by the rest of his subiects, and smiled at by his 
neighbours." 

And he desires that the prince, his son, should so per- 
form his royal duties, that, " In case ye fall in the high- 
way, yet it should be with the honourable report and 
just regret of all honest men." In the dedicatory sonnet 
to Prince Henry of the " Basilicon Doron," in verses not 
without elevation, James admonishes the prince to 

Represse the proud, maintaining aye the right; 

Walk always so, as ever in his sight, 

"Who guards the godly, plaguing the prophane. 

The poems of James I. are the versifications of a man 
of learning and meditation. Such an one could not fail 
of producing lines which reflect the mind of their author. 
I find in a MS. these couplets, which condense an im- 
pressive thought on a favourite subject : — 

Crownes have their compasse, length of daies their date, 
Triumphs their tombes, Felicitie her fate; 
Of more than earth, can earth make none partaker; 
But knowledge makes the king most like his Maker.* 

These are among the elevated conceptions the king had 
formed of the character of a sovereign, and the feeling 
was ever present in his mind. James has preserved an 
anecdote of Henry VIII. , in commenting on it, which 
serves our purpose : — 

" It was strange," said James I., " to look into the life 
of Henry VIII., how like an epicure he lived ! Henry 
once asked, whether he might be saved ? He was an- 
swered, ' That he had no cause to fear, having lived so 
mighty a king.' ' But oh !' said he, 4 1 have lived too like a 

*"Harl. MSS.," 6824. 






CHARACTER OF JAMES THE FIRST. 

king.' He should rather have said, not like a king — for 
the office of a king is to do justice and equity ; but he only- 
served his sensuality, like a l>c-;i^t _~" 

Henry VII. was tin- favourite character of James I. ; 
and it was to gratify the king that Lord Bacon wrote the 
life of this wise and prudent monarch. It is remarkable 
of James L, that he never mentioned the name of Eliza- 
beth without some expressive epithet of reverence; such 
as, "The late queen of famous memory;" a circumstance 
not common among kings, who do not like to remind the 
world of the reputation of a great predecessor. But it 
suited the generous temper of that man to extol the 
greatness he admired, whose philosophic toleration was 
often known to have pardoned the libel on himself for the 
redeeming virtue of its epigram. In his forgiving temper, 
James I. would call such effusions " the superfluities of 
idle brains." 



"THE BOOK OF SPORTS." 

But while the mild government of this monarch has been 
covered with the political odium of arbitrary power, he 
has also incurred a religious one, from his design of ren- 
dering the Sabbath a day for the poor alike of devotion 
and enjoyment, hitherto practised in England, as it is still 
throughout Europe. Plays were performed on Sundays 
at court, in Elizabeth's reign ; and yet, " the Protestants 
of Elizabeth" was the usual expressive phrase to mark 
those who did most honour to the reformed. The king, 
returning from Scotland, found the people in Lancashire 
discontented, from the unusual deprivation of their popu- 
lar recreations on Sundays and holidays, after the church 
service. " With our own ears we heard the general com- 
plaint of our people." The Catholic priests were busily 
insinuating among the lower orders that the reformed 
religion was a sullen deprivation of all mirth and social 



"THE BOOK OF SPORTS. 551 

amusements, and thus " turning the people's hearts." But 
while they were denied what the king terms lawful rec- 
reations,"* they had substituted more vicious ones : ale- 
houses were more frequented — drunkenness more generae- 
— tale-mongery and sedition, the vices of sedentary idle- 
ness, prevailed — while a fanatical gloom was spreading 
over the country. 

The king, whose gaiety of temper instantly sympa- 
thised with the multitude, and perhaps alarmed at this 
new shape which puritanism was assuming, published what 
is called " The Book of Sports," and which soon obtained 
the contemptuous term of " The Dancing Book." 

On this subject our recent principles have governed our 
decisions : with our habits formed, and our notions final- 
ly adjusted, this singular state-paper has been reprobated 
by piety ; whose zeal, however, is not sufficiently histori- 
cal. It was one of the state maxims of this philosophic 
monarch, in his advice to his son, 

" To allure the common people to a common amitie 
among themselves; and that certain daies in the yeere 
should be appointed for delighting the people with public 
spectacles of all honest games and exercise of arms; 
making playes and lawful games in Maie, and good 
cheare at Christmas ; as also for convening of neigh- 
bours, for entertaining friendship and heartliness, by hon- 
est feasting and merriness ; so that the sabbothes be kept 
holie, and no unlawful pastime be used. * This form of 
contenting the people's minds hath been used in all well- 
governed republics." 

James, therefore, was shocked at the sudden melancholy 
among the people. In Europe, even among the reformed 
themselves, the Sabbath, after church-service, was a 



* Tliese are enumerated to consist of dancing, archery, leaping, 
vaulting, May-games, "Whitsun-ales, Morris-dances, and the setting up 
of May -poles, and other manly sports. 



552 CHARACTER OF JAMES THE FIRST. 

festival-day ; and the wise monarch could discover no 
reason why, in his kingdom, it should prove a day of 

penance and self-denial : but when once this unlucky 
"Book of Sports" was thrown among the nation, they 
discovered, to their own astonishment, thai everything 

concerning the nature of the Sabbath was uncertain. 



THE SABBATARIAN CONTROVERSY. 

And, because they knew nothing, they wrote much. The 
controversy was carried to an extremity in the succeeding 
reign. The proper hour of the Sabbath was do! agreed 
on: Was it to commence on the Saturday-eve ? Others 
thought that time, having a circular motion, the point we 
begin at was not important, provided the due portion be 
completed. Another declared, in his " Sunday no Sab- 
bath," that it was merely an ecclesiastical day which may 
be changed at pleasure ; as they were about doing it, in 
the Church of Geneva, to Thursday, — probably from 
their antipathy to the Catholic Sunday, as the early Chris- 
tians had anciently changed it from the Jewish Saturday. 
This had taken place, had the Thursday voters not formed 
the minority. Another asserted, that Sunday was a work- 
ing day, and that Saturday was the perpetual Sabbath.* 
Some deemed the very name of Sunday profaned the 
Christian mouth, as allusive to the Saxon idolatry of 
that day being dedicated to the Sun ; and hence they 
sanctified it with the " Lord's-day." Others were stren- 
uous advocates for closely copying the austerity of the 
Jewish Sabbath, in all the rigour of the Levitical law; 
forbidding meat to be dressed, houses swept, fires kindled, 
&c.j — the day of rest was to be a day of mortification. 
But this spread an alarm, that " the old rotten ceremonial 

♦Collier's "Ecclesiastical History," voL ii., p. 758. 



THE SABBATARIAN CONTROVERSY. 55£> 

law of the Jews, which had been buried in the grave of 
Jesus," was about to be revived. And so prone is man 
to the reaction of opinion, that, from observing the Sab- 
bath with a Judaic austerity, some were for rejecting 
" Lord's-days " altogether; asserting, they needed not 
any ; because, in their elevated holiness, all days to them 
were Lord's-days.* A popular preacher at the Temple, 
who was disposed to keep alive a cheerful spirit among 
the people, yet desirous that the sacred day should not 
pass like any other, moderated between the parties. He 
declared it was to be observed with strictness only by 
" persons of quality."f 

One of the chief causes of the civil war is traced to 

♦Fuller's "Church History," book xl, p. 149. Oue of the most 
curious books of this class is Heylin's "History of the Sabbath," a 
work abounding with uncommon researches; it was written in favour 
of Charles's declaration for reviving lawful sports on Sundays. Warton, 
in the first edition of Milton's "Juvenile Poems," observed in a note on 
the Lady's speech, in Comus, verse 177, that "it is owing to the Puri- 
tans ever since Cromwell's time that Sunday has been made in England 
a day of gravity and severity : and many a staunch observer of the rites 
of the Church of England little suspects that he is conforming to the 
Calvinism of an English Sunday." It is probable this gave unjust of- 
fence to grave heads unfurnished with their own national history, for 
in the second edition Warton cancelled the note. Truth is thus violated. 
The Puritans, disgusted with the levities and excesses of the age of 
James and Charles, as is usual on these points, vehemently threw 
themselves into an opposite direction ; but they perhaps advanced too 
far in converting the Sabbath-day into a sullen and gloomy reserve of 
Pharisaical austerity. Adam Smith, and Paley, in his " Moral and Po- 
litical Philosophy," vol. ii., p. 73, have taken more enlightened views on 
this subject. 

f " Let servants," he says, " whose hands are ever working, whilst 
their eyes are waking; let such who all the foregoing week had their 
cheeks moistened with sweat, and their hands hardened with labour, 
let such have some recreation on the Lord's-day indulged to them ; 
whilst persons of quality, who may be said to keep Sabbath all the 
week long — I mean; who rest from hard labour — are concerned in con- 
science to observe the Lord's-day with the greater abstinence from rec 
reations." 



554 CHARACTER OF JAME8 THE FIRST. 

the revival of this " Book of Sports." Thus it happ 
that from the circumstance of our good-tempered monarch 
discovering the populace in Lancashire discontented, 
being debarred from their rnstic sports — and, exhorting 
them, out of his bonhomu and k> fatherly love, which lie 
owed to them all " (as he Baid), to recover their cheerful 
habits — he was innocently involving the country in divin- 
ity and in civil war. James I. would have started with 
horror at the " Book of Sports," could he have presciently 
contemplated the archbishop, and the sovereign who 
persisted to revive it, dragged to the Mock. What invisi- 
ble thread suspend together the most remote events! 

The parliament's armies usually chose Sundays for 
their battles, that the profanation of the day might be 
expiated by a field-saeritiee, and that the Sabbath- 
breakers should receive a signal punishment. The 
opinions of the nature of the Sabbath were, even in the 
succeeding reign, so opposite and novel, that plays were 
performed before Charles on Sundays. James I., who 
knew nothing of such opinions, has been unjustly aspersed 
by those who live in more settled times, when such 
matters have been more wisely established than ever they' 
were discussed.* 

* It is remarkable of James I. that he never pressed for the 
performance of any of his proclamations ; and his facile disposition 
made him more tolerant than appears in our history. At this very 
time, the conduct of a lord mayor of London has been preserved by 
Wilson, as a proof of the city magistrate's piety, and, it may be added, 
of his wisdom. It is here adduced as an evidence of the king's usual 
conduct: — 

The king's carriages, removing to Theobalds on the Sabbath, 
occasioned a great clatter and noise in the time of divine service. The 
lord-mayor commanded them to be stopped, and the officers of the 
carriages, returning to the king, made violent complaints. The king, 
in a rage, swore he thought there had been no more kings in England 
than himself; and sent a warrant to the lord-mayor to let them pass, 
which he obeyed, observing. — " "While it was in my power, I did my 
duty but that being taken away by a higher power, it is my duty to 



MOTIVES OF THE KING'S AVERSION TO WAR. 555 

MOTIVES OF THE KING'S AVERSION TO 
WAR 

The king's aversion to war has been attributed to his 
pusillanimity — as if personal was the same thing as 
political courage, and as if a king placed himself in a 
field of battle by a proclamation for war. The idle tale 
that James trembled at the mere view of a naked sword, 
which is produced as an instance of the effects of 
sympathy over the infant in the womb from his mother's 
terror at the assassination of RAzzio, is probably not 
true, yet it serves the purpose of inconsiderate writers to 
indicate his excessive pusillanimity ; but there is another 
idle tale of an opposite nature which is certainly true : — 
In passing from Berwick into his new kingdom, the king, 
with his own hand, " shot out of a cannon so fayre and 
with so great judgment" as convinced the cannoniers of 
the king's skill " in great artillery," as Stowe records. It 
is probable, after all, that James I. was not deficient in 
personal courage, although this is not of consequence in 
his literary and political character. Several instances are 
recorded of his intrepidity. But the absurd charge of 
his pusillanimity and his pedantry has been carried so far, 
as to suppose that it affected his character as a sovereign. 
The warm and hasty Burnetsays at once of James I. : — 
"He was despised by all abroad as a pedant without 
true judgment, courage, or steadiness." This " pedant," 
however, had " the true judgment and steadiness" to ob- 
tain his favourite purpose, which was the preservation of a 
continued peace. If James I. was sometimes despised by 
foreign powers, it was because an insular king, who will 
not consume the blood and treasure of his people (and 

obey." The good sense of the lord-mayor so highly gratified James, 
that the king complimented him, and thanked him for it. Of such 
gentleness was the arbitrary power of James composed ! 



556 CHARACTER OF JAMES THE FIRST. 

James had neither to spare), may be little regarded on 
the Continent ; the Maehiavels of foreign cabinets will 
look with contempt on the domestic blessings a British 
sovereign would scatter among his subjects; his presence 
with the foreigners is only felt in his armies ; and they 
seek to allure him to fight their battles, and to involve 
him in their interests. 

James looked with a cold eye on the military adven- 
turer : he said, " No man gains by war but he that hath 
not wherewith to live in peace." But there was also a 
secret motive, which made the king a lover of peace, and 
which he once thus confidentially opened : — 

" A king of England had no reason but to seek always 
to decline a war ; for though the sword was indeed in his 
hand, the purse was in the people's. One could not go 
without the other. Suppose a supply were levied to begin 
the fray, what certainty could he have that he should not 
want sufficient to make an honourable end ? If he called 
for subsidies, and did not obtain, he must retreat inglo- 
riously. He must beg an alms, with such conditions as 
would break the heart of majesty, through capitulations 
that some members vjoidd make, who desire to improve the 
reputation of their wisdom, by retrenching the dignity of 
the crown in popular declamations, and thus he must buy 
the soldier's pay, or fear the danger of a mutiny."* 



JAMES ACKNOWLEDGES HIS DEPENDENCE 
ON THE COMMONS.— THEIR CONDUCT. 

Thus James I., perpetually accused of exercising 
arbitrary power, confesses a humiliating dependence on 
the Commons ; and, on the whole, at a time when 
prerogative and privilege were alike indefinite and 

* Hacket's "Life of Lord-Keeper "Williams," p. 80. The whole is 
distinguished by italics, as the king's own words. 



DEPENDENCE ON THE COMMONS. 557 

obscure, the king received from them hard and rigorous 
usage. A king of peace claimed the indulgence, if not 
the gratitude, of the people ; and the sovereign who was 
zealous to correct the abuses of his government, was not 
distinguished by the Commons from him who insolently 
would perpetuate them. 

When the Commons were not in good humour with 
Elizabeth, or James, they contrived three methods of 
inactivity, running the time to waste — nihil agendo, or 
aliud agendo, or male agendo; doing nothing, doing 
something else, or doing evilly.* In one of these irksome 
moments, waiting for subsidies, Elizabeth anxiously 
inquired of the Speaker, "What had passed in the 
Lower House ?" He replied, " If it please your 
Majesty — seven weeks." On one of those occasions, 
when the queen broke into a passion when they urged 
her to a settlement of the succession, one of the deputies 
of the Commons informed her Majesty, that "the 
Commons would never speak about a subsidy, or any 
other matter whatever; and that hitherto nothing but 
the most trivial discussions had passed in parliament : 
which was, therefore, a great assembly rendered entirely 
useless, — and all were desirous of returning home."f 

But the more easy and open nature of James I. 
endured greater hardships : with the habit of studious 
men, the king had an utter carelessness of money and a 
generosity of temper, which Hacket, in his Life of the 
Lord-Keeper Williams, has described. " The king was 
wont to give like a king, and for the most part to keep 
one act of liberality warm with the covering of another." 
He seemed to have had no distinct notions of total 
amounts ; he was once so shocked at the sight of the 



* I find this description in a MS. letter of the times. 
f Prom a MS. letter of the French ambassador, La Mothe Fenelon, 
to Charles IX., then at the court of London, in my possession. 



558 CHARACTER OF JAMES TIIE FIRST. 

money he had granted away, lying in heaps on a table, 
thai he instantly reduced it to half the sum. It appears 

that Parliament never granted even the ordinary supplies 
they had given to his predecessors; his chief revenue was 
drawn from the customs; yet his debts, of which I find 

an account in the Parliamentary History, after a reign of 
twenty-one years, did not amount to 200,000/.* This 
monarch could not have been so wasteful of his 
revenues as it is presumed. James I. was always gener- 
ous, .and left scarcely any debts, lie must have lived 
amidst many self-deprivations ; nor was this difficult to 
practise for this king, for he was a philosopher, indifferent 
to the common and imaginary wants of the vulgar of 
royalty. Whenever he threw himself into the arms of 
his Parliament, they left him without a feeling of his 
distress. In one of his speeches he says — 

" In the last Parliament I laid open the true thoughts 
of my heart ; but I may say, with our Saviour, ' I have 
piped to you, and you have not danced ; I have mourned, 
and you have not lamented.' I have reigned eighteen 
years, in which time you have had peace, and I have re- 
ceived far less supply than hath been given to any king 
since the Conquest." 

Thus James, denied the relief he claimed, was forced 
on wretched expedients, selling patents for monopolies, 
craving benevolences, or free gifts, and such expedients ; 
the monopolies had been usual in Elizabeth's reign ; yet 
all our historians agree, that his subjects were never 
grievously oppressed by such occasional levies ; this was 
even the confession of the contemporaries of this mon- 
arch. They were every day becoming wealthier by 
those acts of peace they despised the monarch for main- 
taining. "The kingdom, since his reign began, was 
luxuriant in gold and silver, far above the scant of our 

* " Parliamentary History," vol. v., p. 147. 



DEPENDENCE ON THE COMMONS. 559 

fathers who lived before us," are the words of a contem- 
porary.* All nourished about the king, except the king 
himself. James I. discovered how light and hollow was 
his boasted " prerogative-royal," which, by its power of 
dissolving the Parliament, could only keep silent those 
who had already refused their aid. 

• A wit of the day described the Parliaments of James 
by this ludicrous distich : 

Many faults complained of, few things amended, 
A subsidy granted, the Parliament ended. 

But this was rarely the fact. Sometimes they address- 
ed James I. by what the king called a " stinging peti- 
tion ;" or, when the ministers, passing over in silence the 
motion of the Commons, pressed for supplies, the heads 
of a party replied, that to grant them were to put an 
end to Parliament. But they practised expedients and 
contrivances, which comported as little with the dignity 
of an English senate, as with the majesty of the sover- 
eign. 

At a late hour, when not a third part of the house re- 
mained, and those who required a fuller house, amid 
darkness and confusion, were neither seen nor heard, 
they made a protest, — of which the king approved as 
little of the ambiguous matter, as the surreptitious means ; 
and it was then, that, with his own hand, he tore the leaf 
out of the journal. f In the sessions of 1614 the king 
was still more indignant at their proceedings. He and 
the Scotch had been vilified by their invectives; and 
they were menaced by two lawyers, with a "Sicilian 
vespers, or a Parisian matins." They aimed to reduce 
the king to beggary, by calling in question a third part 
of his revenue, contesting his prerogative in levying his 
customs. On this occasion I find that, publicly in the 

* Hacket's " Life of Lord-Keeper Williams." 
f " Rushworth," vol. \., p. 54. 



560 CHARACTER OF JAMES THE FIRST. 

Banquoting-house at Whitehall, the king tore all their hills 
before their faces; and, as not a single act was passed, 
in the phrase of the day this was called an addle Parlia- 
ment.* Such unhappy proceedings indicated the fatal 
divisions of the succeeding reign. A meeting of a differ- 
ent complexion once occurred in 1621, late in Jam 
reign. The monopolies were then abolished. The king 
and the prince shed reciprocal tears in the house; and 
the prince wept when lie brought an affectionate message 
of thanks from the Commons. The letter-writer says, 
" It is a day worthy to be kept holiday ; some say it shall, 
but I believe them not." It never was; for even this par- 
liament broke up with the cries of "some tribunitial ora- 
tors," as James designated the pure and the impure demo- 
cratic spirits. Smollett remarks in his margin, that the 
king endeavoured to cajole the Commons. Had he 
known of the royal tears, he had still heightened the 
phrase. Hard fate of kings ! Should ever their tears 
attest the warmth of honest feelings, they must be thrown 
out of the pale of humanity : for Francis Osborne, that 
cynical republican, declares, "that there are as few abom- 
inable princes as tolerable kings; because princes must 
court the public favour before they attain supreme pow- 
er, and then change their nature ! " Such is the egotism 
of republicanism ! 



SCANDALOUS CHRONICLES. 

The character of James I. has always been taken from 
certain scandalous chronicles, whose origin requires detec- 
tion. It is this mud which has darkened and disturbed 
the clear stream of history. The reigns of Elizabeth and 
James teemed with libels in church and state from oppo 
site paities : the idleness of the pacific court of James I. 

* From a MS. of the times. 



SCANDALOUS CHRONICLES. 561 

hatched a viperous brood of a less hardy, but perhaps of 
a more malignant nature, than the Martin Mar-prelates 
of the preceding reign. Those boldly at once wrote trea- 
son, and, in some respects, honestly dared the rope which 
could only silence Penry and his party ; but these only 
reached to scandalum magnatum, and the puny wretches 
could only have crept into a pillory. In the times of the 
Commonwealth, when all things were agreeable which 
vilified our kings, these secret histories were dragged from 
their lurking holes. The writers are meagre Suetoniuses 
and Procopiuses ; a set of self-elected spies in the court ; 
gossipers, lounging in the same circle ; eaves-droppers ; 
pryers into corners ; buzzers of reports ; and punctual 
scribes of what the French (so skilful in the profession) 
technically term les on dit ; that is, things that might 
never have happened, although they are recorded : regis- 
tered for posterity in many a scandalous chronicle, they 
have been mistaken for histories ; and include so many 
truths and falsehoods, that it becomes unsafe for the his- 
torian either to credit or to disbelieve them.* 



* Most of these works were meanly printed, and were usually found 
in a state of filth and rags, and would hare perished in their own 
merited neglect, had they not been recently splendidly reprinted by Sir 
Walter Scott. Thus the garbage has been cleanly laid on a fashionable 
epergne, and found quite to the taste of certain lovers of authentic 
history! Sir Anthony Weldon, clerk of the king's kitchen, in his 
" Court of King James " has been reproached for gaining much of his 
scandalous chronicle from the purlieus of the court. For this work 
and some similar ones, especially "The None-Such Charles," in which 
it would appear that he had procured materials from the State Paper 
Office, and for other zealous services to the Parliament, they voted 
him a grant of 500Z. '-The Five Tears of King James," which passes 
under the name of Sir Fulk G-reville, the dignified friend of the roman- 
tic Sir Philip Sidney, and is frequently referred to by grave writers, 
is certainly a Presbyterian's third day's hash — for there are parts 
copied from Arthur Wilson's " History .of James I.," who was him- 
self the pensioner of a disappointed courtier ; yet this writer never 
attacks the personal character of the king, though charged with hav- 
36 



562 CriAR.VCTER OF JAMES THE FIRST. 

Such was tin- race generated in this court of peace and 
indolence! And Backet, in his "Life of the Lord-Keeper 
Williams," without disguising the fact, tells us that the 
Lord-Keeper " spared not for cost to purchase the most 
certain intelligence, by his fee'd pensioners, of every 
hour's occurrences at court; and was wont to say that 
no man could be a statesman without a great deal of 
money." 

We catch many glimpses of these times in another 
branch of the same family. When news-books, as the 
first newspapers were called, did not yet exist to appease 
the hungering curiosity of tin- country, a voluminous 
correspondence was carried on between residents in the 

ing scraped up many tales maliciously false. Osborne is a misanthropi- 
cal politician, who cuts with the most corroding pen that ever rot- 
tened a man's name. James was very negligent in dress; graceful 
appearances did not come, into his studies. "Weldon tells us how 
the king was trussed on Horseback, aud fixed there like a pedlar's pack 
or a lump of inanimate matter; the truth is, the king had always an 
infirmity in his legs. Further, we are told that this ridiculous mon- 
arch allowed his hat to remain just as it chanced to be placed on his 
head. Osborne once saw this unlucky king " in a green hunting-dress, 
with a feather in his cap, and a horn, instead of a sword, by his side ; 
how suitable to his age, calling, or person, I leave others to judge from 
his pictures:" and this he bitterly calls " leaving him dressed for pos- 
terity 1" This is the style which passes for history with some readers. 
Hume observes that "hunting," which was James's sole recreation, 
necessary for his health, as a sedentary scholar, " is the cheapest a 
king can indulge ;" and, indeed, the empty coffers of this monarch 
afforded no other. 

These pseudo-histories are alluded to by Arthur "Wilson as ''mon- 
strous satires against the king's own person, that haunted both court 
and country," when, in the wantonness of the times, " every little 
miscarriage, exuberantly branched, so that evil report did often perch 
on them." Fuller has designated these suspicious scribes as " a gener- 
ation of the people who, like moths, have lurked under the carpets of 
the council-table, and even like fleas, have leaped into the pillows of 
the prince's bed-chamber; and, to enhance the reputation of their 
knowledge, thence derived that of all things which were, or were not, 
ever done or thought of." — Church History, book x., p. 87. 



SCANDALOUS CHRONICLES. 503 

metropolis and their country friends : these letters chiefly 
remain in their MS. state.* Great men then employed a 
scribe who had a talent this way, and sometimes a confi- 
dential friend, to convey to them the secret history of 
the times ; and, on the whole, they are composed by a 
better sort of writers ; for, as they had no other design 
than to inform their friends of the true state of passing 
events, they were eager to correct, by subsequent ac- 
counts the lies of the day they sometimes sent down. 
They have preserved some fugitive events useful in histor- 
ical researches, but their pens are garrulous ; and it re- 
quires some experience to discover the character of the 
writers, to be enabled to adopt their opinions and their 
statements. Little things were, however, great matters 
to these diurnalists ; much time was spent in learning 
of those at court, who had quarrelled, or were on the 
point ; who were seen to have bit their lips, and looked 
downcast ; who was budding, and whose full-blown flower 
was drooping : then we have the sudden reconcilement 
and the anticipated fallings out, with a deal of the pour- 
quoi of the pourquoi.\ 

* Mr. Lodge's "Illustrations of British History" is an eminent and 
elegant work of the minutiae, historical ; as are the more recent volumes 
of Sir Henry Ellis's valuable collections. 

f Some specimens of this sort of correspondence of the idleness of the 
times may amuse. The learned Mede, to his friend Sir Martin Stute- 
ville, chronicles a fracas : — " I am told of a great falling out between 
my Lord Treasurer and my Lord Digby, insomuch that they came to 
pedlar's blood and traitor's blood. It was about some money which my 
Lord Ligby should have had, which my Lord Treasurer thought too 
much for the charge of his employment, and said himself could go in 
as good a fashion for half the sum. But my Lord Digby replies that 
he could not peddle so well as his lordship." 

A lively genius sports with a fanciful pen in conveying the same 
kind of intelligence, and so nice in the shades of curiosity, that he can 
• describe a quarrel before it takes place. 

"You know the primum mobile of our court (Buckingham), by whose 
motion all the other spheres must move, or else stand still: the bright 



56i CHARACTER OF JAMES THE FIRST. 

Such was this race of gossipers in the environs of a 
court, where, steeped in a supine lethargy of peace, cor- 
rupting or corrupted, every man stood for himself 
through a reckless scene of expedients and of compro- 
mises. 



A PICTURE OF THE AGE FROM A MS. OF THE 
TBIE. 

A long reign of peace, which had produced wealth in 
that age, engendered the extremes of luxury and want 
Money traders practised the art of decoying the gallant 
youths of the day into their nets, and transforming, in a 
certain time, the estates of the country gentlemen into 
skins of parchment, 

The wax continuing hard, the acres melting. 

Massinger. 

Projectors and monopolists who had obtained patents 
for licensing all the inns and alehouses — for being the 
sole vendors of manufactured articles, such as gold lace, 
tobacco-pipes, starch, soap, &c, were grinding and 
cheating the people to an extent which was not at first 

sun of our firmament, at whose splendour or glooming all our mary- 
golds of the court open or shut. There are in higher spheres as great 
as he, but none so glorious. But the king is in progress, and we are 
far from court. Now to hear certainties. It is told me that my Lord 
of Pembroke and my Lord of Rochester are so far out, as it is almost 
come to a quarrel; I know not how true this is, but Sir Thomas Over- 
bury and my Lord of Pembroke have been long jarring, and therefore 
the other is likely." 

Among the numerous MS. letters of this kind, I have often ob- 
served the writer uneasy at the scandal he has seasoned his letter 
with, and concluding earnestly that his letter, after perusal, should be 
thrown to the flames. A wish which appears to have been rarely com- 
plied with ; and this may serve as a hint to some to restrain their 
tattling pens, if they regard their own peace ; for, on most occasions of 
this nature, the letters are rather preserved with peculiar care. 



A PICTURE OP THE AGE. 565 

understood, although the practice had existed in the 
former reign. The gentry, whose family pride would 
vie with these nouveaux riches, exhausted themselves in 
rival profusion ; all crowded to " upstart London," de- 
serting their country mansions, which were now left to 
the care of " a poor alms-woman, or a bed-rid beadsman." 

In that day, this abandonment of the ancient country 
hospitality for the metropolis, and this breaking-up of 
old family establishments, crowded London with new and 
distinct races of idlers, or, as they would now be called, 
unproductive members of society. From a contempo- 
rary manuscript, one of those spirited remonstrances ad- 
dressed to the king, which it was probably thought not 
prudent to publish, I shall draw some extracts, as a for- 
cible pieture of the manners of the age.* Masters of 
ancient families, to maintain a mere exterior of magnifi- 
cence in dress and equipage in the metropolis, were 
really at the same time hiding themselves in penury : 
they thrust themselves into lodgings, and "five or six 
knights, or justices of peace," with all their retinue, be- 
came the inmates of a shopkeeper ; yet these gentlemen 
had once "kept the rusty chimneys of two or three 
houses smoking, and had been the feeders of twenty or 
forty serving-men : a single page, with a guarded coat, 
served their turn now. 

" Every one strives to be a Diogenes in his house and 
an emperor in the streets ; not caring if they sleep in a 
tub, so they may be hurried in a coach ; giving that 
allowance to horses and mares that formerly maintained 
houses full of men ; pinching many a belly to paint a 
few backs, and burying all the treasures of the kingdom 
into a few citizens' coffers. 

* The MS. is entitled "Balaam's Ass, or a True Discoverie touching 
the Murmurs and Feared Discontents of the Times, directed to King 
James." — Lansdowne Collection, 209. The writer, throughout, speaks 
of the king with the highest respect. 



3 
3 > 



50t3 CHARACTER OF JAMES THE FIRST. 

"There are now," the writer adds, "twenty thousand 
masterless men turned off, who know not this nhdit 
where to lodge, where to eat to-morrow, and ready to 
undertake any desperate eourse." 

Yet there was still a more turbulent and dangerous 
race of idlers, in 

"A number of younger brothers, of ancient houses, 
who, nursed up in fulness, pampered in their minority, 
and left in charge to their elder brothers, who were to 
be fathers to them, followed them in despair to London, 
where these untimely-horn youths are left so hare, that 
their whole life's allowance was consumed in one year." 

The same manuscript exhibits a full and spirited pic- 
ture of manners in this long period of peace. 

"The gentry are like owls, all feathers and no flesh 
all show, and no substance; all fashion, and no feeding 
and fit for no service hut masks and .May-games. The 
citizens have dealt with them as it is said the Indians are 
dealt with ; they have given them counterfeit brooches 
and bugle-bracelets for gold and silver ; * pins and peacock 

* Sir Giles Mompesson and Sir James Mitchell had the monopolies 
of gold lace, which they sold in a counterfeit state ; and not only 
cheated the people, but, by a mixture of copper, the ornaments made 
of it are said to have rotted the flesh. As soon as the grievance was 
shown to James, he expressed his abhorrence of the practice, and 
even declared that no person connected with the villanous fraud 
should escape punishment. The brother of his favourite, Bucking- 
ham, was known to be one, and with Sir Giles Overreach (as Massin- 
ger conceals the name of Mompesson), was compelled to fly the coun- 
try. The style of James, in his speech, is indeed different from 
kings' speeches in parliament : he speaks as indignantly as any indi- 
vidual who was personally aggrieved: "Three patents at this time 
have been complained of, and thought great grievances ; my purpose 
is to strike them all dead, and, that time may not be lost. I will have 
it done presently. Had these things been complained of to me, 
before the parliament, I could have done the office of a just king, and 
have punished them ; peradventure more than now ye intend to do. 
No private person whatsoever, were he ever so dear unto me, shall be 



A PICTURE OF THE AGE. 567 

feathers for lands and tenements ; gilded coaches and 
outlandish hobby-horses for goodly castles and ancient 
mansions ; their woods are turned into wardrobes, their 
leases into laces ; and their goods and chattels into 
guarded coats and gaudy toys. Should your Majesty 
fly to them for relief, you would fare like those birds 
that peck at painted fruits ; all outside." The writer 
then describes the affected penurious habits of the grave 
citizens, who were then preying on the country gentle- 
men : — " When those big swoln leeches, that have thus 
sucked them, wear rags, eat roots, speak like jugglers that 
have reeds in their mouths ; look like spittle-men, espe- 
cially when your Majesty hath occasion to use them ; 
their fat lies in their hearts, their substance is buried in 
their bowels, and he that will have it must first take 
their lives. Their study is to get, and their chiefest care 
to conceal; and most from yourself, gracious sir; not a 
commodity comes from their hand, but you pay a noble 
in the pound for booking, which they call forbearing* 
They think it lost time if they double not their principal 
in two years. They have attractive powders to draw 
these flies^ into their claws; they will entice men with 
honey into their hives, and with wax entangle them ; f 

respected by me by many degrees as the public good ; and I hope, my 
lords, that ye -will do me that right to publish to my people this my 
heart purposes. Proceed judicially ; spare none, where ye find just 
cause to punish : but remember that laws have not their eyes in their 
necks, but in their foreheads." — Rushwortb. vol. i., p. 26. 

* The credit which these knavish traders gave their customers, who 
could not conveniently pay their money down, was carried to an exor- 
bitant charge; since, even in Elizabeth's reign, it was one of the pop- 
ular grievances brought into Parliament — it is there called, " A bill 
against Double Payments of Book Debts." One of the country mem- 
bers, who made a speech consisting entirely of proverbs, said, "Pay 
the reckoning overnight, and you shall not be troubled in the morn- 
ins:." 

f In the life of a famous usurer of that day, who died worth 
400,000?., an amazing sum at that period, we find numberless expe- 



503 CHARACTER OF JAMES THE FIRST. 

they pack the cards, and their confederates, the lords, 
deal, by which means no other men have ever good 
game. They have in a fewyears laid up riches for many, 
and yet can never be content to say — Soul, take thy rest, 
or hand receive no more; do no more wrong: but still 
they labour to join house to house, and land to land. 
What want they of being kings, bul the name? Look 
into the shires and counties, where, with their purchased 
lordships and manors, one of their private letters has 
equal power with your Majesty's privy seal.* It is better 
to be one of their hinds, than your Majesty's gentleman 
usher; one of their grooms, than your guards. What 
care they, if it be called tribute or no, so long as it 
conies in terinly: or whether their chamber be called 
quer, or the dens of cheaters, so that the money 
be left there." 

This crushing usury seemed to them a real calamity ; for 
although in the present extraordinary age of calculations 

dients and contrivances of the money trader, practised on improvident 
landholders and careless heirs, to entangle them in his nets. He gen- 
erally contrived to make the wood pay for the land, which he called 
" making the feathers pay for the goose." He never pressed hard for 
his loans, but fondly compared his bonds " to infants, which battle 
best by sleeping;" to battle is to be nourished — a term still retained 
in the battle-book of the university. I have elsewhere preserved the 
character and habits of the money-dealer in the age of James I. — See 
"Curiosities of Literature," 11th Edit., p. 228. 

* It is observed, in the same life, that his mortgages, and statutes, 
and his judgments were so numerous, that his papers would have 
made a good map of England. A view of the chamber of this usurer 
is preserved by Massinger, who can only be understood by the modern 
reader in Mr. Clifford's edition: — 

Here lay 

A manor, bound fast in a skin of parchment; 

Here a sure deed of gift for a market-town, 

If not redeem'd this day, which is not in 

The unthrift's purse; there being scarce one shire 

In "Wales or England, where my monies are not 

Lent out at usury, the certain hook 

To draw in more. Massinger's City Madam. 



ANECDOTES OF THE MANNERS OF THE AGE. 569 

and artificial wealth, we can suffer " a dunghill-breed of 
men," like Mompesson and his contemptible partner of 
this reign, to accumulate in a rapid period more than a 
ducal fortune, without any apparent injury to the public 
welfare, the result was different then ; the legitimate and 
enlarged principles of commerce were not practised by 
our citizens in the first era of their prosperity ; their 
absorbing avarice rapidly took in all the exhausting prodi- 
gality of the gentry, who were pushed back on the 
people to prey in their turn on them ; those who found 
their own acres disappearing, became enclosers of com- 
mons ; this is one of the grievances which Massinger 
notices, while the writer of the " Five Years of King 
James " tells us that these discontents between the gen- 
try and the commonality grew out into a petty rebel- 
lion; and it appears by Peyton that " divers of the peo- 
ple were hanged up." 



ANECDOTES OF THE MANNERS OF THE AGE. 

The minute picture of the domestic manners of this 
age exhibits the results of those extremes of prodigality 
and avarice which struck observers in that contracted 
circle which then constituted society. The king's prodi- 
gal dispensations of honours and titles seem at first to 
have been political; for James was a foreigner, and 
designed to create a nobility, as likewise an inferior 
order, who might feel a personal attachment for the new 
monarch ; but the facility by which titles were acquired, 
was one cause which occasioned so many to crowd to the 
metropolis to enjoy their airy honour by a substantial 
ruin ; knighthood had become so common, that some of 
the most infamous and criminal characters of this age we 



570 CHARACTER OF JAMES THE FIRST. 

find in that rank.* The young females, driven to neces- 
sity by the fashionable ostentation of their parents, were 
brought to the metropolis as to a market; "whi 
says a contemporary, "they obtained pensions, or some- 
times marriages, by their beauty." When Gondomar, 
the Spanish ambassador, passed to his house, the ladies 
were at their balconies on the watch, to make thema 
known to him; and it appears thai every one of those 
ladies had Bold their favours at a dear rate. Among 
these are some, a who pretending to be wit% y as they called 
them," says Arthur Wilson,f "or had handsome ni 
or daughters, drew a great resort to their houses." And 
it appears that Gondomar, to prevent these conversa- 
ziones from too freely touching on Spanish politics, 
sweetened their silence by his presents.! The same 



* A statesman may read with advantage Sir Edward Walker on 
" The inconveniences that have attended the frequent promotions to 
Titles, since King James came to the crown." Sir Edward appears 
not to disapprove of these promotions during the first ten years of his 
reign, but " when alliance to a favourite, riches though gotten in a 
shop, persons of private estates, and of families whose fathers would 
have thought themselves highly honoured to have been but knights in 
Queen Elizabeth's time, were advanced, then the fruits began to appear. 
The greater nobility were undervalued ; the ancient baronage saw 
inferior families take precedency over them ; nobility lost its respect, 
and a parity in conversation was introduced which in English disposi- 
tions begot contempt ; the king could not employ them all ; some grew 
envious, some factious, some ingratefuL, however obliged, by being 
once denied." — p. 302. 

f One may conjecture, by this expression, that the term of " wits " 
was then introduced, in the sense we now use it. 

\ Wilson has preserved a characteristic trait of one of the lady wits. 
"When Gondomar one day, in Drury-lane, was passing Lady Jacob's 
house, she, exposing herself for a salutation from him, he bowed, but 
in return she only opened her mouth, gaping on him. This was again 
repeated the following day, when he sent a gentleman to complain of 
her incivility. She replied, that he had purchased some favours of 
the ladies at a dear rate, and she had a mouth to be stopped as well as 
others. 



ANECDOTES OF THE MANNERS OF THE AGE. 571 

grossness of maimers was among the higher females of 
the age ; when we see that grave statesman, Sir Dudley 
Carleton, narrating the adventures of a bridal night, and 
all " the petty sorceries," the romping of the " great ladies, 
who were made shorter by the skirts," we discover their 
coarse tastes ; but when we find the king going to the 
bed of the bride in his nightgown, to give a reveille-matin 
and remaining a good time in or upon the bed, " Choose 
which you will believe ;" this bride was not more decent 
than the ladies who publicly, on their balconies, were 
soliciting the personal notice of Gondomar. 

This coarseness of manners, which still prevailed in 
the nation, as it had in the court of Henry VIII. and 
Elizabeth, could not but influence the familiar style of 
their humour and conversation. James I., in the Edict 
on Duels, employs the expression of our dearest bedfellow 
to designate the queen ; and there was no indelicacy 
attached to this singular expression. Much of that silly 
and obscene correspondence of James with Buckingham, 
while it adds one more mortifying instance of " the follies 
of the wise," must be attributed to this cause.* Are not 

* Our wonder and surmises have been often raised at the strange 
subscriptions of Buckingham to the king, — " Tour dog," and James as 
ingenuously calling him " dog Steenie." But this was not peculiar to 
Buckingham; James also called the grave Cecil his ' ; little beagle." 
The Earl of "Worcester, writing to Cecil, who had succeeded in his 
search after one By water, the earl says, " If the 'king's beagle can hunt 
by land as well as he hath done by water, we will leave capping of 
Jowler, and cap the beagle." The queen, writing to Buckingham to 
intercede with the king for Rawleigh's life, addresses Buckingham by 
" My kind Dog." James appears to have been always playing on some 
whimsical appellative by which he characterised his ministers and 
favourites, analogous to the notions of a huntsman. Many of our 
writers, among them Sir Walter Scott, have strangely misconceived 
these playful appellatives, unconscious of the origin of this familiar 
humour. The age was used to the coarseness. We did not then 
excel all Europe, as Addison set the model, in the delicacy of humour ; 
indeed, even so late as Congreve's time, they were discussing its essen- 
tial distinction from wit. 



572 CHARACTER OF JAMES THE FIRST. 

most of the dramatic works of thai day frequently unread- 
able from this circumstance? As an historian, it would 
be my duty to show how incredibly gross were the 
domestic language and the domestic familiarities of 
kings, queens, lord-, and Ladies, which were much like 
the lowest of our populace. We may felicitate ourselves 
on having escaped the grossness, without, howerer, 
extending too far these self-congratulations. 

The men were dissolved iii all the indolence of life and 

its wantonness; they prided themselves in traducing 
their own innocence rather than Buffer a lady's name to 
pass unblemished.* The marriage-tie lost its Bacred 
amid these disorders of social life. The luxurious idlers 
of that day were polluted with infamous vices.; and 
Drayton, in the "Mooncalf," has elaborately drawn full- 
length pictures of the lady and the gentleman of that 
day, which seem scarcely to have required the darkening 
tints of satire to be hideous — in one line the Muse de- 
scribes " the most prodigious birth " — 

He's too much woman and She's too much man. 

The trades of foppery, in Spanish fashions, suddenly 
sprung up in this reign, and exhibited new names and 
new things. Xow silk and gold-lace shops first adorned 
Cheapside, which the continuator of Stowe calls " the 
beauty of London ;" the extraordinary rise in price of 
these fashionable articles forms a curious contrast with 
those of the preceding reign. Scarfs, in Elizabeth's time, 
of thirty shillings value, were now wrought up to as 
many pounds; and embroidered waistcoats, which in the 
queen's reign no workman knew how to make worth 
five pounds, were now so rich and curious as to be cheap- 
ened at forty. Stowe has recorded a revolution in shoe- 

* The expression of one of these gallants, as preserved by "Wilson, 
cannot be decently given, but is more expressive. — p. 147. 



ANECDOTES OF THE MANNERS OF THE AGE. 573 

buckles, portentously closing in shoe-roses, which were 
puffed icnots of silk, or of precious embroidery, worn even 
by men of mean rank, at the cost Of more than five 
pounds, who formerly had worn gilt copper shoe-buckles. 

In the new and ruinous excess of the use of tobacco, 
many consumed three or four hundred pounds a year 
James, who perceived the inconveniences of this sudden 
luxury in the nation, tried to discountenance it, although 
the purpose went to diminish his own scanty revenue. 
Nor was this attack on the abuse of tobacco peculiar to 
his majesty, although he has been so ridiculed for it ; a 
contemporary publication has well described the mania 
and its consequences : " The smoak of fashion hath quite 
blown away the smoak of hospitalitie, and turned the 
chimneys of their forefathers into the noses of their 
children."* The king also reprobated the finical em- 
barrassments of the new fashions, and seldom wore new 
clothes. When they brought him a Spanish hat, he flung 
it away with scorn, swearing he never loved them nor 
their fashions ; and when they put roses on his shoes, he 
swore too, " that they should not make him a ruffe-footed 
dove ; a yard of penny ribbon would serve that turn." 

The sudden wealth which seems to have rushed into 
the nation in this reign of peace, appeared in massy plate 
and jewels, and in " prodigal marriage-portions, which 
were grown in fashion among the nobility and gentry, as 
if the skies had rained plenty." Such are the words of 
Hacket, in his " Memorial of the Lord-Keeper Williams." 
Enormous wealth was often accumulated. An usurer 
died worth 400,000/. ; Sir Thomas Compton, a citizen, 
left, it is said, 800,000/., and his heir was so overcome with 
this sudden irruption of wealth, that he lost his senses ; 
and Cranfield, a citizen, became the Earl of Middlesex. 

The continued peace, which produced this rage for 

* The "Peace-Maker," 1618. 



574 CHARACTER OF JAMES THE FIRST. 

dress, equipage, and magnificence, appeared in all forms 
of riot and excess; corruption bred corruption. The in- 
dustry of the nation was not the commerce of the many, 
but the arts of money-traders, confined to the Buckers of 
the Btate; and the unemployed and dissipated, who were 
every day increasing the population in the capital, were 
a daring petulant race, described by a contemporary as 
"persons of great expense, who, having run themselves 
into debt, were constrained to run into taction; and de- 
fend themselves from tin- danger of the law."* These 
appear to have enlisted under some show of privilege 
among the nobility ; and the metropolis was often shaken 
by parties, calling themselves Roaring-boys, Bravadoes, 

Roysters, and P>ouaventures.f Such were some of the 
turbulent children of peace, whose fiery spirits, could 
they have found their proper vent, had been soldiers 
of fortune, as they were younger brothers, distressed 
often by their own relatives; and wards ruined by their 
own guardians ; \ all these were clamorous for bold pira- 
cies on the Spaniards : a visionary island, and a secret 
mine, would often disturb the dreams of these unemployed 
youths, with whom it was no uncommon practice to take 
a purse on the road. Such felt that — 

In this plenty 
And fat of peace, our young men ne'er were trained 
To martial discipline, and our ships unrigg'd 
Rot in the harbour. Massixger. 

The idleness which rusts quiet minds effervesces in 
fiery spirits pent up together ; and the loiterers in the 
environs of a court, surfeiting with peace, were quick at 
quarrel. It is remarkable, that in the pacific reign of 

* " Five Years of King James." ETarl. Misc. 

f A. Wilson's " Hist, of James I." p. 28. 
% That ancient oppressive institution of the Court of "Wards then 
existed ; and Massinger, the great painter of our domestic manners in 
this reign, has made it the subject of one of his interesting dramas. 



ANECDOTES OF THE MANNERS OF THE AGE. 575 

James I. never was so much blood shed in brawls, nor 
duels so tremendously barbarous. Hume observed this 
circumstance, and attributes it to "the turn that the 
romantic chivalry, for which the nation was formerly so 
renowned, had lately taken." An inference probably 
drawn from the extraordinary duel between Sir Edward 
Sackville, afterwards Lord Dorset, and the Lord Bruce.* 
These two gallant youths had lived as brothers, yet could 
resolve not to part without destroying each other ; the 
narrative so wonderfully composed by Sackville, still 
makes us shudder at each blow received and given. 
Books were published to instruct them by a system of 
quarrelling, " to teach young gentlemen when they are 
beforehand and when behindhand ;" thus they incensed 
and incited those youths of hope and promise, whom 
Lord Bacon, in his charge on duelling, calls, in the lan- 
guage of the poet, Auroroe filii, the sons of the morning, 
— who often were drowned in their own blood ! But, on 
a nearer inspection, when we discover the personal ma- 
lignity of these hasty quarrels, the coarseness of their 
manners, and the choice of weapons and places in their 
mode of butchering each other, we must confess that they 
rarely partake of the spirit of chivalry. One gentleman 
biting the ear of a Templar, or switching a poltroon 
lord ; another sending a challenge to fight in a saw-pit ; 
or to strip to their shirts, to mangle each other, were 
sanguinary duels, which could only have fermented in 
the disorders of the times, amid that wanton pampered 
indolence which made them so petulant and pugnacious. 
Against this evil his Majesty published a voluminous 
edict, which exhibits many proofs that it was the labour 
of his own hand, for the same dignity, the same eloquence, 
the same felicity of illustration, embellish the state- 

* It may be found in the popular pages of the "Guardian;" there 
first printed from a MS. in the library of the Harleys. 



576 CHARACTER OF JAMES THE FIRST. 

papers;* and to remedy it, James, who rarely consented 
to shed blood, condemned an irascible lord to Buffer the 
ignominy of the gallows. 

But, while extortion and monopoly prevailed among 
the monied men, and a hollow magnificence among the 
gentry, bribery had tainted even the lords. All were 
hurrying on in a Btream of venality, dissipation, and 
want ; and the nation, amid the prosperity of the king- 
dom in a long reign of peace, was nourishing in its breast 
the secret seeds of discontent and turbulence. 

From the days of Elizabeth to those of the Charle 
Cabinet transmitted to Cabinel the caution to preserve 
the kingdom from the evils of an overgrown metropolis. 
A political hypochondriacism : they imagined the head 
was becoming too large for the body, drawing to itself 

* l: A publication of his Majestie's edict and seuere censure against 
private combats and combatants, &c." 1613. It is a* volume of about 
150 pages. As a specimen of the royal style, I transcribe two pas- 
sages: — 

" The pride of humours, the libertie of times, the conniuencie of 
magistrates, together with a kind of prescription of impunity, hath bred 
ouer all this kingdome, not only an opinion among the weakest, but a 
constant beleefe among many that desire to be reputed among the 
wisest, of a certain freedome left to all men vpon earth by nature, as 
their birth-right to defeud their reputations with their swords, and to 
take reuenge of any wrong either offered or apprehended, in that 
measure which their owne inward passion or affection doth suggest, 
without auy further proo r e ; so as the challenge be sent in a civil 
manner, though without leave demanded of the sovereign," &o. 

The king employs a bold and poetical metaphor to describe duelling 
— to turn this hawk into a singing-bird, clip its wings, and cage it. 
"By comparing forraine mischiefes with home-bred accidents, it will 
not be hard to judge into what region this bolde bird of audacious pre- 
sumption, in dealing bio we s so confidently, will mount, if it bee once 
let flie, from the breast wherein it lurkes. And therefore it behoveth 
justice both to keep her still in her own close cage, with care that she 
learn neuer any other dittie then Est bene ; but withall, that for pre- 
uention of the worst that may fall out. wee clippe her wings, that they 
grow not too fast. For according to that of the proverb, It is labowr 
lost to lay nets before the eyes of winged fowks" &c. — p. 13. 



ANECDOTES OE THE MANNEKS OF THE AGE. 577 

all the moisture of life from the middle and the extremities. 
A statute against the erection of new buildings was passed 
by Elizabeth ; and from James to his successors, procla- 
mations were continually issued to forbid any growth of 
the city. This singular prohibition may have originated 
in their dread of infection from the plague, but it cer- 
tainly became the policy of a weak and timid govern- 
ment, who dreaded, in the enlargement of the metropolis, 
the consequent concourse of those they designated as 
" masterless men," — sedition was as contagious as the 
plague among the many. But proclamations were not 
listened to nor read ; houses were continually built, for 
they were in demand, — and the esquires, with their wives 
and daughters, hastened to gay or busy London, for a 
knighthood, a marriage, or a monopoly. The govern- 
ment at length were driven to the desperate " Order in 
Council " to pull down all new houses within ten miles of 
the metropolis — and further, to direct the Attorney- 
General to indict all those sojourners in town who had 
country houses, and mulct them in ruinous fines. The 
rural gentry were " to abide in their own counties, and 
by their housekeeping in those parts were to guide and 
relieve the meaner people according to the ancient usage 
of the English nation.'''' The Attorney-General, like all 
great lawyers, looking through the spectacles of his 
books, was short-sighted to reach to the new causes and 
the new effects which were passing around. The wisest 
laws are but foolish when Time, though not the lawyers, 
has annulled them. The popular sympathy was, how- 
ever, with the Attorney-General, for it was imagined 
that the country was utterly ruined and depopulated by 
the town. 

And so in the view it appeared, and so all the satirists 

chorused ! for in the country the ancient hospitality 

was not kept up ; the crowd of retainers had vanished, 

the rusty chimneys of the mansion-house hardly smoked 

37 



578 CHARACTER OF JAMES THE FIRST. 

through a Christmas week, while in London all wai 
orbitantly prosperous; masses of treasure were melted 
down into every object of magnificence. "And is not 
this wealth drawn from our acres?" was the outcry of 
the rural censor. Yet it Mas dear that the country in 
no way was impoverished, for the land rose in price; and 
if manors Bometimes changed their lords, they Buffered 
no depreciation. A sudden wealth was diffused m 
nation; the arts of commerce were first advancing; the 
first great ship launched for an Indian voyage, was then 



tiplied demands, opened a perpetual market for the conn- 
try. The money-traders were breeding their hoards as 
the graziers their flocks ; and while the goldsmiths' shops 
blazed in Cheap, the agriculturists beheld double har- 
vests cover the soil. The innumerable books on agricul- 
ture, published during these twenty years of peace i> an 
evidence of the improvement of the country — sustained 
by the growing capitals of the men in trade. In this 
progress of domestic conveniency to metropolitan luxury, 
there was a transition of manners; new objects and new 
interests, and new modes of life, yet in their incipient state. 
The evils of these luxuriant times were of quick 
growth ; and as fast as they sprung, the Father of his 
people encountered them by his proclamations, which, 
during long intervals of parliamentary recess, were to be 
enforced as laws : but they passed away as morning 
dreams over a happy, but a thoughtless and wanton people. 



JAMES THE FIRST DISCOVERS THE DISOR- 
DERS AXD DISCOXTEXTS OF A PEACE OF 
MORE THAX TWEXTY YEARS. 

The king was himself amazed at the disorders and 
discontents he at length discovered ; and, in one of 



x 



DISORDERS OF A TWENTY TEARS' PEACE. 579 

his later speeches, has expressed a mournful disap- 
pointment : — 

" And now, I confess, that when I looked before upon 
the face of the government, I thought, as every man 
loould have done, that the people were never so happy as 
in my time ; but even, as at divers times I have looked 
upon many of my coppices, riding about them, and they 
appeared, on the outside, very thick and well-grown unto 
me, but, when I turned into the midst of them, I found 
them all bitten within, and full of plains and bare spots ; 
like the apple or pear, fair and smooth without, but when 
you cleave it asunder, you find it rotten at heart. Even 
so this kingdom, the external government being as good 
as ever it was, and I am sure as learned judges as ever it 
had, and I hope as honest administering justice within it; 
and for peace, both at home and abroad, more settled, 
and longer lasting, than ever any before ; together with as 
great plenty as ever: so as it may be thought, every 
man might sit in safety under his own vine and fig- 
tree," &c, &c* 

But while we see this king of peace surrounded by 
national grievances, and that " this fair coppice was very- 
thick and well-grown," yet loud in murmurs, to what 
cause are we to attribute them ? Shall we exclaim with 
Catharine Macaulay against "the despotism of James," 
and " the intoxication of his power ?" — a monarch who 
did not even enforce the proclamations or edicts his wis- 
dom dictated ; f and, as Hume has observed, while vaunt- 
ing his prerogative, had not a single regiment of guards 
to maintain it. Must we agree with Hume, and reproach 

* Rush-worth, vol. i., p. 29 ; sub anno 1621. 

f James I. said." I will never offer to bring a new custom upon my 
people without the people's consent ; like a good physician, tell them 
what is amiss, if they will not concur to amend it, yet I have discharged 
my part." Among the difficulties of this king was that of being a foreigner, 
and amidst the contending factions of that day the " British Solomon " 
seems to have been unjustly reproached for his Scottish partialities. 



5S0 CHARACTER OF JAMES THE FIRST. 

the king with his indolence and love of amusement — " par- 
ticularly of hunting ?" * 



THE KING'S PRIVATE LIFE IN HIS OCCA- 
SIONAL RETIREMENTS. 

Tin: king's occasional retirements to Roystonand New- 
market have even been surmised to have borne some anal- 
ogy to the horrid Capraea of Tiberius; l>ut a witness has 
accidentally detailed the king's uniform life in these occa- 
sional seclusions. James L withdrew at times from pub- 
lic life, but not from public affairs ; and hunting, to which 
he then gave alternate days, was the cheap amusement 
ami requisite exercise of his sedentary habits: but the 
chase only occupied a few hours. A part of the day was 
spent by the king in his private studies : another at his 
dinners, where he had a reader, and was perpetually 
sending to Cambridge for books of reference : state affairs 
were transacted at night ; for it was observed, at the time, 
that his secretaries sat up later at night, in those occa- 
sional retirements, than when they were at London.f I 
have noticed, that the state papers were composed by 

* La Boderie, the French Ambassador, complains of the king's fre- 
quent absences ; but James did not wish too close an intercourse with 
one who was making a French party about Prince Henry, and whose 
sole object was to provoke a Spanish war : the king foiled the French 
intriguer ; but has incurred his contempt for being " timid and irreso- 
lute." James's cautious neutrality was no merit in the Frenchman's 
eye. 

La Boderie resided at our court from 1606 to 1611, and his "Am- 
bassades," in 5 vols., are interesting in English history. The most 
satirical accounts of the domestic life of James, especially in his un- 
guarded hours of boisterous merriment, are found in the correspondence 
of the French ambassadors. They studied to flavour their dish, made 
of spy and gossip, to the taste of their master. Henry IV. never for- 
gave James for his adherence to Spain and peace, instead of France 
and warlike designs. 

f Hacket's Scrinia Reserata, Part I., p. 27. 



THE KING'S PRIVATE LIFE. 5S1 

himself; that he wrote letters on important occasions with- 
out consulting any one ; and that he derived little aid 
from his secretaries. James was probably never indo- 
lent ; but the uniform life and sedentary habits of literary 
men usually incur this reproach from those real idlers who 
bustle in a life of nothingness. While no one loved 
more the still-life of peace than this studious monarch, 
whose habits formed an agreeable combination of the con- 
templative and the active life, study and business — no 
king more zealously tried to keep down the growing 
abuses of his government, by personally concerning him- 
self in the protection of the subject.* 

* As evidences of this zeal for reform, I throw into this note some 
extracts from the MS. letters of contemporaries. — Of the king's inter- 
ference between the judges of two courts about prohibitions, Sir Dud- 
ley Carleton gives this account : — " The king played the best part in 
collecting arguments on both sides, and concluded that he saw much 
endeavour to draw water to their several mills ; and advised them to 
take moderate courses, whereby the good of the subject might be more 
respected than their particular jurisdictions. The king sat also at the 
Admiralty, to look himself into certain disorders of government there; 
he told the lawyers ' he would leave hunting of hares, and hunt them 
in their quirks and subtilities, with which the subject had been too long 
abused.' "—MS. Letter of Sir Dudley Carleton. 

In "Win wood's Memorials of State " there is a letter from Lord 
Northampton, who was present at one of these strict examinations of 
the king ; and his language is warm with admiration: the letter being 
a private one, can hardly be suspected of court flattery. " His Majesty 
hath in person, with the greatest dexterity of wit and strength of argu- 
ment that mine ears ever heard, compounded between the parties of 
the civil and ecclesiastical courts, who begin to comply, by the king's 
sweet temper, on points that were held to be incompatible." — Win- 
wood's Mem. iii., p. 54. 

In his progresses through the country, if any complained of having 
received injury from any of the court, the king punished, or had satis- 
faction made to the wronged, immediately. 



582 CHARACTER OF JAMES THE FIRST. 



DISCREPANCIES OF OPINION AMONG THE 
DECKERS OF JAMES THEFIRST. 

Let us deteot, among the modern decriers of the charac- 
ter of James I., tlmsc contradictory opinions, which Btart 
out in the same page; for the convictioD of truth flashed 
on the eyes of thofle who systematically vilified him, :m<l 
must often hare pained them; while it embarrassed and 
confuse.] those, who, being of no party, yet had adopted 
the popular notions. Even Hume is at variance with 
himself; for he censures James for his indolence, u which 
prevented him making any progress in the practice of 
foreign politics, and diminished that regard which all the 
neighbouring nations had paid to England during the 
reign of his predecessor." p. 20. Yet this philosopher 
observes afterwards, on the military character of Prince 
Henry, at p. 63, that "had lie lived, he had probably pro- 
moted the glory, perhaps not the felicity, of his people. 
The unhappy prepossession of men in favour of ambition, 
&c, engages them into such pursuits as destroy their 
own peace, and that of the rest of mankind" This is true 
philosophy, however politicians may comment, and how- 
ever the military may command the state. Had Hume, 
with all the sweetness of his temper, been a philosopher 
on the throne, himself had probably incurred the censure 
he passed on James I. Another important contradiction 
in Hume deserves detection. The king, it seems, "boast- 
ed of his management of Ireland as his masterpiece." 
According to the accounts of Sir John Davies, whose po- 
litical works are still read, and whom Hume quotes, James 
I. "in the space of nine years made greater advances to- 
wards the reformation of that kingdom than had been 
effected in more than four centuries ;" on this Hume adds 
that the king's "vanity in this particular was not with- 
out foundation." Thus in describing that wisest act of 



OPINIONS OF THE DECMERS OF JAMES I. 583 

a sovereign, the art of humanising his ruder subjects De- 
colonisation, so unfortunate is James, that even his most 
skilful apologist, influenced by popular prepossessions, em- 
ploys a degrading epithet — and yet he, who had indulged 
a sarcasm on the vanity of James, in closing his gen- 
eral view of his wise administration in Ireland, is carried 
away by his nobler feelings. — " Such were the arts," ex- 
claims the historian, " by which James introduced human- 
ity and justice among a people who had ever been buried 
in the most profound barbarism. JSToble cares ! much su- 
perior to the vain and criminal glory of conquests." Let 
us add, that had the genius of James the First been war- 
like, had he commanded a battle to be fought and a vic- 
tory to be celebrated, popular historians, the panders of 
ambition, had adorned their pages with bloody trophies; 
but the peace the monarch cultivated ; the wisdom which 
dictated the plan of civilisation; and the persevering 
arts which put it into practice — these are the still virtues 
which give no motion to the spectacle of the historian, 
and are even forgotten in his pages. 

What were the painful feelings of Catharine Macaulay, 
in summing up the character of James the First. The 
king has even extorted from her a confession, that " his 
conduct in Scotland was unexceptionable," but " despica- 
ble in his Britannic government." To account for this 
seeming change in a man who, from his first to his last 
day, was always the same, required a more sober his- 
torian. She tells us also, he affected " a sententious wit ;" 
but she adds, that it consisted " only of quaint and stale 
conceits." We need not take the word of Mrs. Macaulay, 
since we have so much of this " sententious wit " record- 
ed, of which probably she knew little. Forced to confess 
that James's education had been " a more learned one than 
is usually bestowed on princes," we find how useless it is 
to educate princes at all ; for this " more learned educa- 
tion " made this prince " more than commonly deficient 



584 



CIIARAfTER OF JAMES TTIE FIRST. 



mi all the points lie pretended to have any knowh 
ofl" This incredible result gives no encouragement for :i 
prince, having :i Buchanan for his tutor. Smollett, hay- 
ing compiled the popular accusations of the " vanity, the 
prejudices, the littleness of soul," of tins abused monarch, 
surprises one in the Bame page by discovering enough 
good qualities to make something more than a tolerable 
king. iv llis reign, though ignoble to himself, was happy 
to his people, who were enriched by commerce, felt no 
severe impositions, while they made considerable ]>ro'_ 
in their liberties." So that, on the whole, the nation ap- 
pears not to have had all the reason they have so fully 

exercised in deriding and vilifying a sovereign, who had 
made them prosperous at the price of making himself 
contemptible] I shall notice another writer, of an amia- 
ble character, as an evidence of the influence of popular 
prejudice, and the effect of truth. 

When James went to Denmark to fetch his queen, he 
passed part of his time among the learned ; but such 
was his habitual attention in studying the duties of a 
sovereign, that he closely attended the Danish courts of 
justice; and Daines Barrington, in his curious " Obser- 
vations on the Statutes," mentions, that the king bor- 
rowed from the Danish code three statutes for the pun- 
ishment of criminals. But so provocative of sarcasm is 
the ill-used name of this monarch, that our author could 
not but shrewdly observe, that James " spent more time 
in those courts than in attending upon his destined con- 
sort." Yet this is not true : the king was jovial there, 
and was as indulgent a husband as he was a father. 
Osborne even censures James for once giving marks of 
his uxoriousness ! * But while Daines Barrington de- 
grades, by unmerited ridicule, the honourable employ- 
ment of the " British Solomon," he becomes himself per- 

* See "Curiosities of Literature," vol. iii., p. 334. 



OPINIONS OF THE DECRIERS OF JAMES I. 585 

plexed at the truth that flashes on his eyes. He ex- 
presses the most perfect admiration of James the First, 
whose statutes he declares " deserve much to be enforced ; 
nor do I find any one which hath the least tendency to 
extend the prerogative, or abridge the liberties and 
rights of his subjects." He who came to scoif remained 
to pray. Thus a lawyer, in examining the laws of James 
the First, concludes by approaching nearer to the truth : 
the step was a bold one ! He says, " It is at present a 
sort of fashion to suppose that this king, because he 
was a pedant, had no real understanding, or merit." 
Had Daines Barrington been asked for proofs of the 
pedantry of James the First, he had been still more per- 
plexed ; but what can be more convincing than a law- 
yer, on a review of the character of James the First, 
being struck, as he tells us, by "his desire of being in- 
structed in the English law, and holding frequent confer- 
ences for this purpose with the most eminent lawyers, — 
as Sir Edward Coke, and others !" Such was the mon- 
arch whose character was perpetually reproached for in- 
dolent habits, and for exercising arbitrary power ! Even 
Mr. Brodie, the vehement adversary of the Stuarts, 
quotes and admires James's prescient decision on the 
character of Laud in that remarkable conversation with 
Buckingham and Prince Charles recorded by Hacket.* 

But let us leave these moderns perpetuating traditional 
prejudices, and often to the fiftieth echo, still sounding 
with no voice of its own, to learn what the unprejudiced 
contemporaries of James I. thought of the cause of the 
disorders of their age. They were alike struck by the 
wisdom and the zeal of the monarch, and the prevalent 
discontents of this long reign of peace. At first, says 
the continuator of Stowe, all ranks but those " who were 
settled in piracy," as he designates the cormorants of 

* Brodie's "History of British Empire," vol. ii., pp. 244, 411. 



586 CHARACTER OF JAMES THE FIRST. 

war, and curiously enumerates their classes, "were right 
joyful of the peace; but, in a few years afterwards, all 
the benefits were generally forgotten, and the happii 
of the genera] peace of the most part contemned." The 
honest annalisl accounts f<>r this unexpected result by 
the natural reflection — "Such is the world's corruption, 
and man's rile ingratitude."* My philosophy enables 
me to advance but little beyond. A Learned contempo- 
rary, Sir Symond D'Ewes, in his manuscript diary, 
notices the death of the monarch, whom he calls "our 
learned and peaceable sovereign." — v ' It did not a little 
amaze me to see all men generally slight and disregard 
the loss of so mild and gentle a prince, which made me 
even to feel, that the ensuing times might yet render his 
loss more sensible, and his memory more dear unto pos- 
terity." Sir Symond censures the king for not engaging 
in the German war to support the Palsgrave, and main- 
tain " the true church of God;" but deeper politicians 
have applauded the king for avoiding a war, in which he 
could not essentially have served the interests of the rash 
prince who had assumed the title of King of Bohemia, f 
"Yet," adds Sir Symond, "if we consider his virtues 
and his learning, his augmenting the liberties of the 
English, rather than his oppressing them by any un- 
limited or illegal taxes and corrosions, his death deserved 
more sorrow and condolement from his subjects than it 
found."| 

Another contemporary author, Wilson, has not ill- 
traced the generations of this continued peace — " peace 
begot plenty, plenty begot ease and wantonness, and 
ease and wantonness begot poetry, and poetry swelled 

* Stowe's Annals, p. 845. 

f See Sir Edward Walker's " Hist. Discourses," p. 321 ; and Bar- 
rington's "Observ. on the Statutes," who says, "For this he deserves 
the highest praise and commendation from a nation of islanders." 

% Harl. MSS. 646. 



SUMMARY OS 1 HIS CHARACTER. 5S7 

out into that bulk in this king's time which begot mon- 
strous satyrs." Such were the lascivious times, which 
dissolving the ranks of society in a general corruption, 
created on one part the imaginary and unlimited wants 
of prosperity; and on the other produced the riotous 
children of indolence, and the turbulent adventurers of 
want. The rank luxuriance of this reign was a steaming 
hot-bed of peace, which proved to be the seed-plot of 
that revolution which was reserved for the unfortunate 
son. 

In the subsequent reign a poet seems to have taken a 
retrospective view of the age of peace of James I. con- 
templating on its results in his own disastrous times — 

States that never know 
A change but in their growth, which a long peace 
Hath brought unto perfection, are like steel, 
"Which being neglected will consume itself 
With its own rust ; so doth Security 
Eat through the hearts of states, while they are sleeping 
And lulled into false quiet. 

Nabb's Hannibal and Scvpio. 



SUMMARY OF HIS CHARACTER. 

Thus the continued peace of James I. had calamities 
of its own ! Are we to attribute them to the king ? It 
has been usual with us, in the solemn expiations of our 
history, to convert the sovereign into the scape-goat for 
the people ; the historian, like the priest of the Hebrews, 
laying his hands on Azazel,* the curses of the multitude 
are heaped on that devoted head. And thus the histo- 
rian conveniently solves all ambiguous events. 

The character of James I. is a moral phenomenon, a sin- 
gularity of a complex nature. We see that we cannot 

* The Hebrew name, which Calmet translates Bouc Emissaire, and 
we Scape Goat, or rather Escape Goat 






588 CHARACTER OF JAMES THE FIRST. 

trust to those modern writers who have passed tlieir 
censures upon him, however just may be those very 
censures; for when we look narrowly into their represent- 
ations, as surely we find, perhaps without ao exception, 
thai an invective never closes without some unexpected 
mitigating circumstance, or qualifying abatement \t 
the moment of inflicting the censure, some recollection 
in opposition to what is asserted passes in the mind, and 
to approximate to Truth, they offer a discrepancy, a self 
contradiction. James must always be condemned on a 
system, while his apology is only allowed the benefit of 
a parenthesis. 

How it has happened that our luckless crowned phi- 
losopher has been the common mark at which so many 
quivers have been emptied, should be quite obvious 
when so many causes were operating against him. The 
shifting positions into which he was cast, and the ambi- 
guity of his character, will unriddle the enigma of his 
life. Contrarieties cease to be contradictions when 
operated on by external causes. 

James was two persons in one, frequently opposed to 
each other. He was an antithesis in human nature — or 
even a solecism. We possess ample evidence of his 
shrewdness and of his simplicity; we find the lofty- 
regal style mingled with his familiar bonhommie. 
Warm, hasty, and volatile, yet with the most patient 
zeal to disentangle involved deception ; such gravity in 
sense, such levity in humour ; such wariness and such in- 
discretion ; such mystery and such openness — all these 
must have often thrown his Majesty into some awkward 
dilemmas. He was a man of abstract speculation in the 
theory of human affairs ; too witty or too aphoristic, he 
never seemed at a loss to decide, but too careless, per- 
haps too infirm, ever to come to a decision, he leaned on 
others. He shrunk from the council-table ; he had that 
distaste for the routine of business which studious seden- 



SUMMARY OF HIS CHARACTER. 589 

tary men are too apt to indulge ; and imagined that his 
health, which he said was the health of the kingdom, 
depended on the alternate days which he devoted to 
the chase ; Royston and Theobalds were more delectable 
than a deputation from the Commons, or the Court at 
Whitehall. 

It has not always been arbitrary power which has 
forced the people in the dread circle of their fate, sedi- 
tions, rebellions, and civil wars ; nor always oppressive 
taxation which has given rise to public grievances. 
Such were not the crimes of James the First. Amid 
the full blessings of peace, we find how the people are 
prone to corrupt themselves, and how a philosopher on 
the throne, the father of his people, may live without 
exciting gratitude, and die without inspiring regret — 
unregarded, unremembered ! 



INDEX. 



Am-.r.NKTiiY's opinion of enthusiasm, 

l 9& 
A.B8TBA<rno> of mind in great man, 

AoTOBS, traits of character in great, 

Ai>i:ian VI.. Pope, persecutes literary 
men, 

Dl Ofl the nature ofgeutua, (7. 

Ai.rir.ui. childhood of, BO; [onelil 
his eharacb ted by Plu- 

tarch's works, 190. 

Ancki.". Mi, iiaki.. illustrates Dai 
his ideas of intellectual labour, 11^; 
his reason for a solitary life. 151: his 
picture of bait'.- of Pisa destroyed by 
Bandinelli, 211; his elerated char- 
acter, 331; his letter to Vaaarl de- 
scribing the death of hia servant, 4<>. 

Antipathies of men of genius, 214-218. 

Anxiety of L'enin>. 104; of autl. 
artists over their labours. 112-122, 

ABISTOPHACTE8, popularised by a false 
preface, 375. 

Art Frif.ni>>iiip<. 276-278. 

Ai'.ti^t^. "Studies," or first thoughts, 
176; their mutual jealousies, 208-212, 

Autobiography. Itsinterec 

Barry the painter, his love of ancient 
literature. 3S; his general enthusiasm, 

86; his rude eloquence, 146. 

Baillf.t and his catalogue, 45S. 

Beattie describes the powerful effect 
on himself of metaphysical Btudy, 197. 

Birch, Dr., and liobertson the Histo- 
rian, 445-455. 

Boccaccio's friendship for Petrarch. 
2S0-2S2. 

Book Collectors, 299-304. 

Booksellers, the test of public opinion, 
25S. 

Bosius, his researches in the Roman 
catacombs, 194. 

Boyle on the disposition of childhood, 
49; his advertisement against visitors. 
n.. 154; his idea of a literary retreat, 
249. 

Bruce, the traveller, disbelieved, 110. 

Buffon gives a reason for his fame, 
127. 

Buonaparte revives old military tac- 
tics, 34S. 



- diary of the heart, 100. 
Bpbtok, his constitutional melancholy, 

290 
r.iNv an a self-taught eenio 

15m:on . 133. 

C'ai.imny frequently attacks genius, 
•J If.. 

CANTF.NAr and his autobiography 

Cahaoi i. the, their unfortunate jeal- 
ousies, 'Jiii. 

Castag no murders a rival artist, 211. 

Ohabus V.. friendship for Titian, 332; 
Robertson's life of. 446. 

Ciiati.i.kt, Madame de, a female philoso- 
pher and friend of Voltaire. 1M, 

Chatham, Karl of, his constancy of 
study. 182. 

Cbxnibh a literary fratricid 

C» ibo on youthful Influenc 

Clabbndon, hia love of retirement, 152. 
. their first Invention, 467. 

Coal, it- lir>t use as fuel. 471. 

Coma Vigil, a disease produced by 
study. 198. 

Composition, its toils, 112-113. 

Contemporary criticism, frequently un- 
just, 105. 

Conversations of men of genius, 186- 
14!»: those who converse well seldom 
write --veil. 14;;. 

COTTJI, Abbe, troubled by wealth, 249. 

Cbacherode, Key. C M.. his collections 
of art and literature 

Criticism not alwaya just. 92-106. 

Curkib, his idea of the power of genius, 
42. 

Cuvif.;i"s discoveries in natural history, 
194. 

Dante, his great abstraction of mind. 

ISO. 
Deaths of literary men, 319. 
Depreciation, theory of, 214. 
Diaries, their value, 165. 
Disease induced by severe study, 197. 
Domenichino poisoned by riyals, 211. 
Domestic Novelties at first condemned, 

462-474. 
Domestic life of literary men, 231-247. 
Dreams of eminent men. 171-173. 
Drouais an enthusiastic painter, 205. 

England and its tastes, 346. 



INDEX. 



591 



Family affection an incentive to genius, 

23S--242. 

A n's early enthusiasm for Greece. 

20-3. 
First Studies of great men, T9-S5: first 

thoughts for great works, 174-130. 
Forks," when first used, 463. 
Franklin, Dr., notes the calming of the 

sea. 179; his influence on American 

manners. 357. 
Fcseli's imaginative power, 202. 

Galileo invents the pendulum. ITS. 

Galvanism first discovered, 179. 

Gesnee recommends a study of litera- 
ture to artists. 3S ; on enthusiasm. 
206: his wife a model for those of 
literary men. 272-275. 

Glelm and his portrait gallery, 279. 

Goldsmith contrasted" with* Johnson, 
384. 

Goldoni overworks his mind, 197. 

Govebnment of the thoughts, 159. 

G:-:ay's excitement in composing verse, 

GriBEKT, his great work on military 
tactics, 343. 

Habitual Pcesuits, their power over 
the mind, 394-397. 

Hallucinations of genius, 19S; real- 
ities with some minds. 201. 

Haydn, his regulation of his time. 127. 

Helmont's (Van) love of study, 203. 

Herbert of Cherbnry, Lord," questions 
the Deitv as to the publication of his 
hook, 19S. 

Hobbes, theory to explain his terror, 
201. 

Hogaeth, attacks on, «•., 120. 

Hollis. his miserable celibacy, 266. 

Honours awarded literary "men, 327- 
33S. 

Horne (Bishop), his love of literary 
labour, 1S2. 

Hume, the historian, his irritability, 120 ; 
unfitted for gay "life. 135; gives his 
reason for literary labour, /i., 236 : en- 
deavours to correct Eobertson, 445. 

Hunter, Dr., fraternal jealousy, 209. 

Hypochondria, its cause and effect, 201. 

Ideality defined, 1S5; its power, 1S6- 

Incompleted books. 456-462. 
Industry of great writers. 169. 
Influence of authors, 350-354: 357- 

361. 
Intellectual nobilitv. 329. 
Imitation in literature'. 897-401. 
Ieeitability of genius, 99; 119-122. 
Isoceaies' belief in native character, 

51. 

James I., a critical disquisition on the 

character of, 493. 
Julian. Emperor, anecdotes of. 133. 
Jealousy in art and literature. 207-213 ; 

of honours paid to literary men, 329. 



Johnson, Dr., defines the literary char- 
acter. 25 ; his moral dignity. 254 ; his 
metaphysical loves, 265 ; anecdotes of 
him and Goldsmith, 3S4. 

Juvenile works, their value, 94. 

Labour endured by great authors. 105; 

a pleasure to some minds, 234-236. 
Letters in the vernacular idiom, 437- 

492. 
Linn-ecs sensitive to ridicule, 105; 

honours awarded to, 253. 
Liteeaey Friendship, 276-2S6. 
Literature an avenue to glory, 326. 
Locke's simile of the human mind, 40. 

Mannerists in literature, 3S2. 

Marco Polo ridiculed unjustly, «., 110. 

Matrimonial State in literature and 

art, 262-275. 
Mazzuchelli a great literary historian, 

457. 
Meditation, value of, 174. 
Memory, as an art, 163, 165. 
Mendelssohn, Moses, his remarkable 

history. S7-91. 
Men of Letters, their definition, 29S- 

313. 
Metastasio a bad sportsman, 57; his 

susceptibility, 1S9. 
Milton, his high idea of the literary 

character, 25 \ his theory of genius, 

41 ; his love of study, 1S3 ; sacrifices 

sight to poetry, 204. 
Miscellanlsts and their works, 369- 

373. 
Modes of Study used by great men, 

169. 
Molif.ee, his dramatic career, 404-424. 
Montaigne, his personal traits, 293. 
More, Dr., on enthusiasm of genius, 

200. 
Moreri devotes a life to literature, 204. 
Mortlmer, the artist, his athletic exer- 
cises, 59. 
Muratori, his literary industry, 456. 

National tastes in literature, 841. 
Necessity, its influence on literature, 
255- 257. 

Obscure Births of great men, 826-328. 
Old Age of literary "men, 313-320. 

Peculiar habits of authors, 161-163. 

Peiresc, his early bias toward litera- 
ture, 307 ; his studious career, 809. 

Personal Character differs from the 
literary one, 237-297. 

Petkarcu*s remarkable conversation 
on his melancholv, 96; his mode of 
life. 155. 

Pope, his anxiety over his Homer, 113; 
severity of his early studies. 198. 

Poitssin "fears trading in art. 256. 

Poverty of literary men, 247; some- 
times a choice, 249-251. 

Practical Knowledge of life wanting 
in studious men, 243-246. 



502 



INDEX. 



Prayers of gnat men, 196. 

i ; 1-115. 

Predisposition of the mind. 100 
Pbi i Aosa, their b ; their 

sional falsehood, 374; vanity of 

authors In, 876 ; Idle apologies In, 877; 

Dryden's interesting 
Prbjudi i s, lib rniy, 218-816, 
Public Fasti formed by nubile writers, 

861. 

Ba< on, sensibility of. 116: 684 ■ 
Bambouiluh, Hotel de, 411-418 

i analyze d, ; '-~ 
Be< lush manners In great authors, 185- 

L86, 
Biuob <>f men of sen 
Bkhtjnxeatiom of literature, 267-269. 

of literary m< 
1 : i . v n • ■ i ds, Blr J., hu "automal 

t.m," 68: discovers its Inconsistencies, 

■it. 
Bzdii era the terror of genii 
Bobebtsom the historian, 443-455. 

o, Madame, anecdote of the power 

of poetrv on, 188. 
BowrxT.nls anxiety over his picture 

of the Tempest, 114. 
Bousseat's expedient to endure societv, 

103; his domestic Infelicity, 234. 
Koyal Society, attacks on, ;/., 87. 
Kubens' transcripts of the poets, 36. 

Sandwicii, Lord, his first idea of a 
stratagem at sea, ITS. 

Scudery, Mademoiselle, 412. 
Sensitiveness of genius, 101-103; 109- 

110; 187-1S9. 
Sei.f-immolatiox of genius to labour, 

203. 
Self-praise of genius, 217-227. 
Servants, a dissertation on, 474-4S6. 
Siiee, Sir M. A., relations of poetry and 

painting, ?;., 37. 
Siienstone. his early love, 264. 
Slddons, Mrs., anecdote of, 1S5. 
Singleness ofgeniua, 322-325. 
Society, artificial, an injury to genius, 

124. 
Solitude loved by men of genius, 54-60 ; 

149-157. 
Steam first discovered, ISO. 
Btebne, anecdotes of, 432-443. 



Studies of advanced life, ."IT 

>n i.i: and its peculiarity - 

Bl B( iii inn. n v of men of genius, 226- 

888. 

: ions of one mind perfected by 

anothi 

In his labours, 117. 
Tatlob, Dr. Brook, his torpid rnelan- 

choly, 
Tempi a, Blr W., his love of gardens, 870. 
Tiieobbtioai. hlstorj . 
Thomson, hi- sensitiveness to grand 

poetry, 181: irritability over false 

crltlclsi 
Tobai i o, its introduction Into England, 

•17o. 
Toothpicks, origin ol 
Tmim.i.v Gallery of Sculpture, fk, 86. 

TbOUBABOUBS, their inlluele 

[Tmbkkllab, their history, 466. 
Utilitarianism and Its narrow view of 

literature, 28. 

Obtvkbsauty ofgeniua, 3J0. 

Van Pbauh refuses to part with Ms 

collection to an emperor, 
Vraux ski tches In a storm, 192. 

VBBS DB Bd lETE, 401-404. 

\iM.n irvBBBas of genius, 827-2801 

VffliOHABiBS of geniui 

VlBTTOBfl disliked by literary men, 153- 

Voi.i ube, anecdote of his visit to a 
country house, 180; his universal 
genius, 322. 

"Walpole's, Horace, opinion of Gray, 
125 ; of Burke, 126. 

"Watson neglects research in his pro- 
fessorship, 30. 

"Werner's discoveries in science, 194. 

"Wilkes desirous of literary glory, 31. 

Wit sometimes mechanical. J7o." 

"Wives of literary men, 207-275. 

WOBKfi intended, but not executed, 166. 

"Wood. Anthony, sacrifices all to study, 
204.' 

Young, the poet, his want of sympathy, 

245. 
Youth of great men, 52-78. 






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